The Answer is Blowing

WIND – #5 in a series on Lessons from Things that make up Nature

You can’t see it. it has no shape or color or physical presence.

Shelley called it a destroyer and protector … and uncontrollable. Shakespeare said we should throw caution into it and ‘just do it’ (way before Nike used that phrase). Bob Dylan said the answer (to everything?) is blowing in it. Churchill said the kite blows highest against it, not with it. There are lots of statements and lots of thoughts.

THE WIND

On the trail, a wind can cool you down. But in other times, it might be dangerous – whipping sand and grit against you that rips you skin off. In the winter, a cold wind (Blue Norther we called them in Texas) could blow in and freeze your mule team before you unhitched them … so they said in years gone by.

In the movie Phenomenon, with John Travolta, he stares at the gentle blowing of the top of the trees and finds peace and solace as they rock back and forth … a gentle reminder to the simplicity of, well, everything.

I appreciate the wind. It is such a joy to see leaves dance across the ground … to watch the Washington DC Cherry Blossom flower petals dance across the sky … to see the clouds race across the wide open sky … so many beautiful effects of a silent power.

There are many great poems … here his one …

The Wind
Robert Louis Stevenson

I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies’ skirts across the grass– 

O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!

I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all–

O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?

O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!

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Stevenson personifies the wind. It tosses things. It sings. It pushed. it called. It hid.

The Bible talks of the Holy Spirit as wind (among many things) which blows where it wants. We can’t control it.

And one of the understanding of our walk in the Lord is to be filled with the Spirit. Many see this as filling a gas tank … but it’s more like a sail on a boat. You ‘trim’ your sails to move with the wind. To compete against it is courting with disaster.

So … trim your sails … move with the wind … let the Holy Spirit lead you.

One last quote …

May the wind always be at your back and the sun upon your face, and the winds of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars.