Wind Power

The moaning howl of a 50 mph wind woke me from a deep sleep last night. I could hear the whining gusts moving through the tree line that runs alongside our property. I pulled the blankets up tighter around my chin. “Ooooooooooo-Eeeeeeeee.”  There’s something both comforting and foreboding about this hollow, eerie sound, and I can’t quite understand how I can feel both of those emotions simultaneously. I do though, and when a windstorm begins its noisy utterance at night, all sorts of destructive scenarios present themselves to me.

High Winds

When my ears are confronted with particularly high winds (and we hear them quite often on our small farmstead), I am uncomfortably aware of my human vulnerability. I imagine the immense potential power that could be displayed. I’ve seen the effects of tornadoes that ripped through the homes of people just like me. It’s both frightening and awe-inspiring to think that wind could do that much damage to anything in the physical realm. Wind cannot be seen, but the effects of the wind are often tangible.

“Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” ( John 3:7-8, NKJV).

When Holiness Meets Humanness

Jesus used this windy metaphor to aptly describe the work of the Holy Spirit. When holiness meets humanness, amazing things begin to take shape. Former desires for self dissipate, and the heart of the affected individual takes a positive direction in ways that may seem almost impossible.

“I’ll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you. I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed” ( Ezekiel 36:26, Message).

Wind is an amazing agent of potential action. We can’t see it but the effects of it are too clear to ignore. The divine “wind” of the Holy Spirit can move in someone who was previously unable to make changes by themselves. Its power is not readily noticed with the naked eye. However, the inevitable effects are witnessed when a negatively challenged life is positively altered.

Michael Temple writes from North Dakota.

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