Wind

Last week we had more than our share of wind. Several staff members lost the shingles on their roofs, and one discovered that her chimney had fallen and taken out a huge hunk of their new home. I thought we didn't have any wind damage at our house until a neighbor mentioned to me that my fence was down. I was incredulous, knowing that I drive up the alley and look at the fence every day. It turns out that, sure enough, a small section of the front fence that faces the street was completely upended. Neither Bobby Ann nor I had seen it because we never drive down the street!

When we moved to Burkburnett in the Wichita Falls area in 1980 you could, on a daily basis, see the wide swath of destruction that a killer tornado had cut out of the landscape in 1979. We had friends who had retreated to a hallway closet when they heard the sirens. When they emerged, there was nothing left of their house. Remarkably, they were uninjured. We all remember the tragedies of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and so we know about the destructive power of wind.

I guess that, in a fundamental way, wind is energy or power. Out in west Texas they are now building huge wind generators in order to harness the power of wind for green electricity. Last summer I drove through a wind generator farm south of Abilene that was so huge that I could see nothing but windmills from east to west.

It appears to me that, like every other source of energy or power, wind can be good or bad, creative or destructive. So it is with the energy of our own lives. Jesus compared the power of the Holy Spirit to the wind, coming from places we do not fully understand and blowing in directions that we cannot fully control. May God's wind inhabit our lives in such a way that God creates out of us powerful instruments for good in a world that is in great need.

Don Underwood