Windy

Windy again today. With our network of outbuildings and roofing, we always know about windy days! Everything creaks and rattles, and we sometimes get quite apprehensive, though so far things seem to have held together.

On a windy day we're reminded just how little power and control we really have over the forces that govern our planet, and that's no bad thing. In scripture, the wind is generally a sign of God's presence in disturbing - though perhaps also enabling - power, and of course as every Bible scholar knows, the word for 'wind' and 'spirit' is the same in both Hebrew and Greek. On the first Christian Day of Pentecost, it is a 'rushing mighty wind' that fills all the room where the disciples of Jesus are meeting.

I don't know about you, but I like to keep rushing mighty winds safely outside the room I'm in. I'm worried enough by all the creaks and groans from the roofs outside, without wanting the wind in here where I am! There'd be papers all over the place, stuff falling over, I should lose control of my carefully ordered work plans for the day. Stuff might be lost or ruined.

But God's plans for us are not always neat and orderly - not in the way we'd like them to be, anyway. The history of the Church can be summarized, perhaps, in terms of the orderly building of structures, hierarchies, power bases, bureaucracies . . . then every so often the wind gets into the room, the papers blow about a bit, and we're reminded of who is really in charge, and what we're really supposed to be about. We may call it revival, and be glad of it (though usually, so far as the Church, capital 'C' is concerned, some little way after the event, when things are safe and ordered again). It's always an untidy and challenging thing, it can't be otherwise. The Holy Spirit is God NOT in a box, or in a book, but HERE. And if the Holy Spirit comforts what is disturbed, he also disturbs what gets too comfy!

So, thinking about it, it is with my own personal life and journey of faith. At times, sometimes it's just at the point where I'm congratulating myself at how well I'm doing, how in control I am, things start to get a bit windy. My first reaction may very well be to run for cover, to find a place to hide. Adam and Eve found out a long time ago that you don't hide from God, so the book of Genesis tells us. I'm finding it, too - that I can try for just so long to run away from the wind, or to battle against it: better just to say yes to it, and go with the flow.