Hello,
Wind is a powerful thing! For the last 24 hours we have been experiencing a steady wind of 25 mph, with gusts reaching 60 mph. The result of this “breeze” is trees down across roads, limbs littered all over the place, and loss of power to hundreds of homes. All three of these things apply to our house, with the added addition of the loss of many shingles from our roof.
Fortunately, we have a generator that powers parts of our house when the electricity is cut, and it has had to kick in often over the 7 years we have lived here. Previous to this outage, the generator has only had to work for short periods of time, a couple of hours at the most. But with the prediction of the onslaught of the wind to continue through the rest of the day, the generator is getting quite a work out.
Now, I know that those of you who live in hurricane zones or who have wrestled with a tornado will tell me that I don’t know what wind is. Having never been caught in a hurricane, I can only imagine what it must be like to be pounded by 100 mph winds. I have, however, had a tornado bounce right over me, and I have witnessed with my eyes the destruction that those winds brought. But having said all of this, I stand by my first statement, wind is a powerful thing.
Christians, as you probably know, experience God as triune, and we call that the Trinity. The Bible gives witness to God’s nature as being three-in-one. Only one God, but simultaneously expressing God’s-self in three ways: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Over the course of Christianity, people have tried to provide an understandable way of conceiving the triune nature of God, but every explanation tends to fall short of capturing the essence of God’s nature. Usually, God gets divided up into separate modes of acting, or into separate times of being. But the witness of the Bible is that God is not divided up by actions or time, God’s entire self is actively at work, unified at all times. Some have found the witness of the Triune nature of God to be a stumbling block to their faith. Personally, I find the human incomprehensibility of the trinity to be a helpful piece to my Christian faith, for it seems to me that God being God would naturally be beyond complete human comprehension. And further, I find “peace that surpasses all human understanding” in knowing that God is bigger than my human struggles, and because of that God can see a way through them that I cannot see, and has the power to do so, when I do not.
Well, after that theological interlude, let me get back to the wind. When the Bible speaks of God, the Holy Spirit, wind is often part of the picture. In the second chapter of Acts, the Disciples encountered the presence of the Holy Spirit as a loud, gushing wind blew through the room in which they were hiding. And previously, in the book of John, the disciples experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit when Jesus breathed on them. Wind.
As incomprehensible God’s nature might be, when I encounter the power of the wind, I find myself in a faith learning event. Wind is something that the human eye cannot see, but its power can sure be felt. Likewise, God, especially as encountered in the Holy Spirit, might be unseen to the human eye, but its windy power can sure be felt…..felt in the release of one’s shoulders as forgiveness sweeps through a sin cluttered life, cleaning it out….felt in the nudge toward faith when the bread and wine are given and the words are spoken, “this is the body and blood of Christ given for you”…..felt when in the deepest moments of loneliness and worthlessness someone takes hold of your hand and says, “the peace of the Lord be with you”…felt when you stand at the freshly dug gravesite of a loved one and grief is tempered by the singing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow….”
Wind is a powerful thing….and so is God.
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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