The Wind

Yesterday, I was hanging around at the house staying in out of the heat and the wind started to blow.  It didn’t get a little breezy.  The wind blew hard.  The big bad wolf would have appreciated the ferocity of this windstorm.

The neighbors nice new flagpole doesn’t stand exactly straight anymore and that stop sign became an expert at doing the twist.

I’m sorry the video wasn’t better but the wind kept blowing me around the driveway.  I was doing my best not to go airborne but I suspect it would have taken considerably more wind to get me to lift off.

When it was all over with, I just had to wander out into the yard and retrieve a few things that had been displaced by the big blow.

For a little while, I felt really small.  I felt as if the weather could just do anything it wanted and all the houses and trees and everything else in its path was at its mercy.

It pushed against me hard enough that I had to regain my balance in order to remain where I stood.  It raged and roared effortlessly reminding me it could do more, be stronger and demolish as much as it wanted.

I realized that this was just a fraction of the power of the wind even though this was more than I cared to experience.

Acts 2:1 On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. 2 Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. 3 Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them.

I remember as a kid, thinking that the Holy Spirit was kind of a big status symbol for Christians, an endowing of a superpower to set them apart from others.  I don’t know where I got it so crossed up but it isn’t the first thing I managed to get sideways about.

But the Holy Spirit is something to immerse myself in that makes me feel small, it roars in the face of my opposition, in the voids of my inner being, above the heights of my own weakness.

It comes from above to make others look toward the heavens and take the focus off of me.

It rushes toward everything in its path to transform it into a part of the will of my creator.  It is there whether it seems to be still or a gentle breeze or a raging storm.

But nothing can stop it.  Not even my faults and failures can stand in the way.  So my guilt for my part in standing in the way needs to only go as far as being placed under the blood of the Lamb.

I have never, in any of my sins, in any of my defects, in any of my lack of understanding, undermined the will of God even though it feels like it.  I just cannot stop the wind.