Warm air has blown through the neighborhood these past two days. Winter is not yet gone, but there has been enough warmth to remind me of the promise of spring time. I love the changing of seasons. Oftentimes God uses the wind to bring that shift … great gusts of wind usher in the fall, the winter, and now the spring.
It seemed an age, or time was none …
Slowly the earth heaved out of sleep
And shivered, and the trees of stone
Bent and sighed in the gusty wind,
And rain swept as birds flocking sweep.
Far off the wood
Rolled the slow thunders on the wind.
~John F. Freeman
The sound of the wind can be fierce; the force of the wind destructive … and yet the wind of the Spirit bestows his holiness and various gifts.
And like a mighty wind blows with a force I cannot see
I will open wide my wings, I will open wide my wings
I will open wide my wings and let the Spirit carry me
From the corners of creation
Comes the Father’s holy breath
Ridin’ on a storm with tender fierceness
Stirring my soul to holiness
~Chris Rice
In these gusts of wind in early spring I want to be reminded of the “tender fierceness” of the Spirit in my life … the leaning into that wind to be carried, lifted up, and purified.
He who forms the mountains,
creates the wind,
and reveals his thoughts to man,
he who turns dawn to darkness,
and treads the high places of the earth—
the LORD God Almighty is his name.
~Amos 4:13
