Blowin' In the Wind

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s been windy lately.  For a few days, it blew from the north.  As I write this, it’s blowing from the south.  I guess all the stuff that blew to Nebraska earlier is on its way back now.

Wind is a part of nature, of course.  It can be a dangerous one, though.  If it was snowing, we’d have a tremendous storm.  If there’s a fire, it’s has the potential to really be serious.  Even without anything like that, it can do damage, knocking down tree limbs, tearing shingles off roofs, and so forth.  And of course, when those winds become things like tornadoes and hurricanes, they can be even more dangerous.

The Bible sometimes describes God’s Spirit as being the wind.  When we hear that, we usually think of a soft breeze.  I usually do, anyway.  I tend to think of God’s Spirit as gently guiding us, nudging us along, moving us slowly along the right path.

God’s Spirit can be like that.  But I think God’s Spirit can also be a strong force.  It can be an awesome thing to behold.  One of my favorite psalms, Psalm 29, tells us that God’s voice breaks the cedars.  God’s Spirit is not always a soft, gentle breeze.  Sometimes God’s Spirit is powerful and even destructive.

I don’t believe that God uses God’s Spirit to destroy God’s people.  But I believe God’s Spirit sometimes acts powerfully against sin and wrong.  And sometimes we need that.  Sometimes, God’s Spirit tries to gently guide us and nudge us along, and we ignore God’s Spirit and do what we want to do anyway.  Sometimes God’s Spirit needs to figuratively (and sometimes maybe literally) smack us upside the head to get our attention.  Sometimes God’s Spirit needs to blow powerfully, like a strong and even potentially destructive wind, in order to get us to change our ways.

The wind will eventually go down.  It always does.  And it will eventually pick up again, because it always does that, too.  And there will be times when God’s Spirit acts gently and nudges us, and there will be other times when God’s Spirit acts powerfully to get our attention.  Both are needed, and both are part of how God’s Spirit works.

God gives us God’s Spirit in the way we need it, not the way we want it.  I much prefer God’s Spirit to come gently.  But I can think of times in my life when God needed to act more powerfully, to get my attention.  I suspect you can, too.  Let’s be grateful to God for both, because both are gifts from God.