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 writing this. I schedule the posts to publish at 1:35 after you’re home from church. On the east coast, anyway. You can sign up for notifications and will get an email anytime I post something. 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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(Written two years ago at the height of COVID-19 and the Orange Scare…)
Today is more of a reminder and encouragement than any kind of study.
My daughters – twelve-year-old twins – swim competitively and have come into that time of life. Some days, they have 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 twelve-year-old 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 have a competition around the end of September, and it might be their time, and we are wondering just how to approach it.
My wife brought it up again this morning with a new twist.
“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 election 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 tell you anything about the day of the competition, so I will wait until the day approaches and I have to make a decision. I will wait on in Him who knows.
Mind you, I know it’s hard, but you’ll still have to decide, and it helps to know as much as you can at the time…
Selah.
