Sunday Lesson – Where the wind blows

Where the wind blows…

Most Sundays, I publish the Sunday Lesson. It’s little more than an observation, or an idea, or a study I’m working on that has interesting applications. I feel deeply blessed and deeply responsible for writing this. I’m up for all comments and try to respond to them all. Be forewarned that I reserve Sundays for my family. It’s a work in progress, but a goal we’re growing into. So, if I don’t respond, I’m probably playing chess with my daughter or watching lousy TV with my wife. On an outstanding day, I might catch a couple innings of Braves baseball. With my wife, of course. It’s Sunday.

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Today’s lesson is more of a reminder and encouragement than a study.

My daughters – twins – used to swim competitively when they were younger. As biology obliges, at just the right time they came into that time of life. Some days, they had no desire, and I mean all caps – NO DESIRE – to go to practice. As I’m not a woman, and especially as I’ve never been a young girl on a swim team worrying about my body, I give them a wide swath. Mom? Not so much. Mom was an Olympic alternate gymnast and doesn’t put up with much: you do what you have to for your sport, for your talent, and for your skill. So the girls had a competition coming up, and it might be their time, and we wondered just how to approach it.

I remember my wife bringing it up with a twist. (Thankful for my journals…)

“Ya know,” she said, “we’re talking about the end of next month, right?”

“Right.”

“I mean, it’s the first of August. Who has a clue what we’ll be doing at the end of September? We might be living in Canada by then?”

“True enough.”

“So, we don’t have to decide for another month. Why don’t we wait and see how this goes with school and the work and everything else?”

“Man,” I said. “You’re like a genius.

So, the wisdom today, the encouragement for today, for whatever you’re going through or doing, is to wait if you can. See what’s happening. Wet a finger and watch which way the wind blows. Pray. I’m old enough to remember Anne Herring and The Second Chapter of Acts. They sang a song called Which Way the Wind Blows (see here kind of…very rough video) with these exact sentiments, and I can’t get it out of my mind when I think these thoughts. The line comes from the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus when Jesus chides the Pharisee for not understanding that what is born of a man is of man, but what is born of the spirit is spirit.

Do not be surprised when I say: You must be born from above.

The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Think of these words today. You don’t even know which way the wind blows or where it goes. I can’t say anything about the competition or decisions made but I can say that we waited to see which way the wind blows. We waited on knowing and on Him who knows.

Mind you, it’s hard, but you’ll still have to decide, and it helps to know as much as you can at the time…

Selah.