When we experience something completely new to us we make sense of that experience by comparing it to something we do find familiar. Thus rattlesnake “tastes like chicken.” Ostrich meat “tastes like beef.” Experiencing zero gravity in space is “like” floating in the Dead Sea, where the extreme salinity of the water makes swimmers so buoyant they are virtually weightless and cannot sink.

To describe colors to someone who has always been blind and only knows the world by touch, we might say blue “is like” cool running water, red “is like” the heat of fire, and white “is like a handful of fluffy cotton balls.”

That need to compare the new and unknown to the old and familiar is also found in today’s text from Acts, which endeavors to describe the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s empow…