The early fall wind whipped my hair into my eyes as I tried to water my deck plants. The wind caught drops from my watering can and splashed them willy-nilly across the floor boards. I looked up at the neighbor's towering maple tree a few yards away and watched it bow to the unseen gusts, its leafy branches bowing under the assault.
I thought, it's funny how something so powerful is so unseen. I see the bending trees and grasses as the wind blows through, but not the wind itself. Airplanes are held aloft by the power of air and wind, yet we can’t see it. Weather forecasters create wind maps for us to see where and how it will blow, yet it comes and goes in the most mysterious of ways. We can only track it by how it affects what is in its path.
The wind of the Spirit
Jesus talked of the wind, likening it to the Holy Spirit.
"The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” John 3:8
The great act of God in redeeming us, in causing us to be born anew from darkness to eternal light by the Holy Spirit, is like the wind. We can’t see it happen, we can’t discern the incredible spiritual power that is sweeping us clean. And yet, it is so. We feel the power sometimes, or not. But just like seeing the clouds blow across the sky or the branches whip in the fall wind, we know things are different inside us. His power is more sure than anything we can see.
And isn’t that what faith is? We choose to put our trust in the God who is invisible, because we see what He has made with the power we can’t see. We believe what He says even though we can't see who is speaking except with the eyes of our spirit. We are changed by the unseen power in His Words.
Remember, like the airplanes who give themselves to the wind to carry them up and on, so we, too, can utterly trust the God we can’t see.
Bible study: Ezekiel 37:9, 10; John 3:6; Acts 4:31; 1 Corinthians 2:11
Photo by Ian An on Unsplash
