October 2010

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"Be still and know that I am God. . ."
Psalm 46:10a


Wishes of the Wind

 "He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit."  John 20:22

             The other morning, a very windy autumn morning, while pulling into the driveway after taking Caleb to school, I caught a glimpse of a red-tailed hawk through the trees.  I parked the car and hurried out across the yard to get a better look. My hair was in a whirl, but high above I saw the hawk, wings outstretched, suspended on the wind.  He let the wind push him this way and that, lift and drop him at will.  He tipped his wings and tilted into it with what looked like a sense of play.  He definitely didn't appear to be trying to escape.  Actually, he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, so much so that, like I was a kid again, I wished for wings.  Imagine what that would feel like, I thought, way up there above the earth, looking down on everything, letting the wind have its way. . . Now, maybe that hawk was trying to hunt and the wind was changing his plans, but from where I stood, he looked like joy with wings.

            A couple of mornings later, I read the following passage in which Jesus was explaining to Nicodemus what it meant to be born again.

             "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

             Reading that, I realized that I do have wings.  Being born again gave me those wings.  Not wings in the sense of angel wings as portrayed by the character Clarence in "It's a Wonderful Life."  People are people, and angels are angels, and we don't become angels when we pass into heaven.  But wings in the sense that, since I've been born again, I have spiritual wings and the ability to fly in Christ. 

            What if I welcomed every Holy Spirit wind that God the Father sends my way?  What if, instead of huddling beside the familiar tree trunk of everything I know and keeping my spiritual wings tucked tightly against my body in either fear or just plain stubbornness, I unfolded them and sailed off the branch?  What if I said, "Yes," to the wind of the Holy Spirit no matter how untamed or unconventional it seemed, or no matter how uncomfortable it made me?  What if, instead of fighting and struggling to continue with my own plans, I let the Spirit of God send me where He wishes?  "Not my will, but Yours, Father."  What if those words were more than just what I know I ought to say?  What if I acted on them? Just think what He might be able do with me! Just think what that would look like. . .

            It would, I believe, look like joy. 

 

 

Daye Phillippo

September 2010