Spring winds bring....

Blog March 26, 2014

I can hear the wind blowing, a fierce spring wind, a March wind in fact.  I remember hearing that March winds bring April showers which bring May flowers, so I am celebrating these winds.  But that is not the point of this blog entry.

I look out through the window, dust motes floating in the sunshine streaming in, and I watch the wind blow the great branches of the mighty evergreens behind our house, as if they were feathers, but I cannot see the wind.

Just down the road from our house, the wind blows into our car the acrid odor of skunk spray, wind carrying it to us though I can see neither the fragrance nor the wind. And I am grateful that same wind will soon bring into my house the perfume of the lilac bush behind my house in only a few weeks.

Wind, I can hear it; I can see evidence of it, and I can smell it’s work, but I cannot see it.  DO I question its reality?  Never! too much evidence to the contrary.

So, it struck me, is the Holy Spirit.  I cannot see the person of the Holy Spirit, but the evidence of the Spirit at work is all around me. I have seen changed lives, bitterness healed, the aimless moving with direction, and I guess I must look at my own life.  It cannot be but for the work of the Spirit that I am here, doing what I am doing.

I remember, without difficulty, many near misses, in my life.  Yes, some were near car accidents, where by the natural law, we should not have survived.  But some came in the form of temptations, where pleasure danced, and but for the Spirit’s work, my life would have had a different course.  I can pull up events where bitterness and hurt could have ruled, but for the gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit. No, I never saw the Spirit incarnate, in the flesh, but I know that without his attention, his speaking into my life, the outcome would have been different.

I have heard him in the voice of a bird, a baby’s coo, the ripple of a cool stream over a rocky creek bed.  I have seen his power in a changed human attitude, the majesty of an eagle floating on the air currents over a gorge, in the path he has guided me on.  I have breathed in the fragrance of spring rain on the dust, of red roses glowing in my garden, the fragrance of the back of a child’s sweaty neck.  I have experienced his impact in my thinking, bringing together long ago memorized Scripture or the words from a devotional or Sunday preaching, answering prayers for guidance.  And all of these things, evidences, remind me of the power and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  And if I will pay attention to the evidence of his work in this world, I will have no reason to be discouraged or despondent. 

That same powerful God loves me. I know it because his Spirit brought again to my mind this morning, the words from I John 4:7-9, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”

photo from http://imgarcade.com/1/wind-trees/