The Wind Blows Where It Chooses

A cold weather front is moving through and the speed of the wind has increased. Actually, it is fairly howling from the Northwest at a steady 25 to 30 miles per hour, with gusts well into the 40 mile per hour range which, for this Midwesterner, is fairly disconcerting. What happened to our Springtime breezes from the Southwest? Our balmy Southerly wisps of heat and vitality to dry the ground and put everyone in the mood for farming and gardening? Pulling my long coat back out of the closet I wonder what happened to walking across the street to the office in shirt sleeves. Lord knows that I only had the opportunity to do it once or twice so far this year but, God, it seems that we should be doing it every day, right?! Instead, the Northwest wind blows and the temperature drops. Snow flurries are in the forecast for tomorrow morning. What has happened to the way things should have been in early April?

Jesus says to Nicodemus, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3.8 NRSV) God no more owes humanity an explanation for why God does what God does than the wind owes us an explanation of why it blows the way it blows. God chooses to birth new life in humanity through the power and presence of God's own Holy Spirit and that is the end of the conversation. Period. It is a gift of God, God's choice, God's own option. It is how one comes to spiritual re-birthing. Kind of like the wind, it blows from the Southwest one day, pointing all the leaves on the trees to the Northeast, then it blows from the Northwest the next day, pointing all the leaves on the trees to the Southeast. You hear the sound of it, you feel the rush of the wind upon your cheek, you discern the wind cooling or heating the air around you, but you do not know from whence it came or to where it is going, only that it is, in that moment, all around you. So it is with God's Holy Spirit - and you can either receive it and relish in the wonder of the life it gives or you can go back inside your life and slam the door so that neither the wind, nor the Spirit, will ever touch you again.

That is your choice: to receive the gift or turn away from it, to savor the breath of God's wind upon your life and laugh in its splendor or stand there stuck in the notion that 'unless you can figure it out personally, you won't believe it is happening the way it seems.' God has already decided what God is going to do and how God is going to do it: New life in the Spirit is offered to all who receive it. Now, what are you going to do?

I think I am going to shut down this computer and go outside and stand in the wind for a while. Suddenly, the breeze seems more a friend and a freedom. Who knows, I might even let my imagination wander with the currents of God's Spirit directing my life in a whole way. I'll trust it all to the winds of the Spirit.

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Don