Wind, wind

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. John 3:8

The wind is relentless today. I awoke to the sound of a shed door banging, and a side door creaking and groaning in the buffeting it is getting. The dustbins, once emptied, skidded across the road. 

It’s one of those days when hairspray would only help if you emptied the whole can onto your coiffeur. Which is what happened back in the day – I remember the girls in my school sporting beehives set in concrete. They never moved and might have held up in this stormy gale.

The Holy Spirit is likened to a few things in the Bible – oil, a dove, fire – and wind. Not my favourite thing. Perhaps because of its unpredictable nature, and the possibility of a close encounter with a flying projectile off one of the many trees round our house.

In a great sermon yesterday I heard faith be described as a response. When the Holy Spirit blew into my life well over thirty years ago, he cleared out a lot of detritus and junk (attitudes, expectations, sins) and made way for Jesus to take up residence. All I had to do was respond – and that was definitely the easy part. 

The Spirit blew into my life totally unexpectedly, from a direction I’d not anticipated and with power I’d never imagined. His action prompted my response and my life was changed in a twinkling, forever.

So I will stop complaining about the wind.

Choices

We live in a self-indulgent world, and it is so easy to give in to the temptation to reward ourselves in many little and big ways. 

Last night I sank down onto the couch and picked up the iPad. I checked my emails. I had a game of Sudoku – good exercise for the brain. I scrolled through my apps. 

I opened one Robbie had put there. A site from his church in California with the most recent sermons and worship. I was surprised at the number of talks I could listen to, or music I could join in with. I clicked on one of the talks and sat for 50 minutes being refreshed and fed with challenging ideas.

I could have easily wasted those 50 minutes watching mindless telly. I was tired (when am I not tired these days?) and could have justified just slobbing out on the sofa. 

But for some reason I listened, was stimulated to thought, challenged to look deeper into some of the ideas, challenged to think more about my views and faith.

Choices are all around each of us every day. That is one of the privileges of living in the affluent west. We actually have opportunity; we actually have free time. It’s so easy to squander it.

I awoke this morning with a fresh determination to use my time wisely. It’s limited and one day it will run out, and I don’t want to regret time spent on useless, time-wasting activities.

Today I want to make the right choices.

Sufficient unto the day...

Sufficient unto the Day...

To one of my vintage, that title encourages the completion  ... ‘is the evil thereof’. 

It’s from the Sermon on the Mount preached by Jesus. Mostly we think of the so-called Beatitudes when we think of that body of teaching, but in fact it contains loads more than that, and one thing more is his argument against worry. 

Don’t worry, Jesus says, just trust in God. He gives the natural world all they need to be warm and fed, and he will look after you, too.  Sharp intake of breath. What about famine victims? What about people in our own country choosing to heat the room rather than eat, unable to afford both? 

I don’t have the answer. But I do have an observation gained over a few years of living. Worry doesn’t get you anywhere. All it does is mess up your digestion and keep your eyes open through the long hours of the night. And in the morning, you are no further forward, and perhaps have even slipped backwards, in that you can’t think well without proper rest. And you probably can’t see that sometimes, you – and I – may be the answer to feeding some of the poor.

I’ve just read Matthew chapters 5 to 7, which is the Sermon. Challenging. Challenging beyond my ability to succeed at it. Love my enemy? Don’t criticize others? I’ll be happy when I’m in mourning?

Ask, Jesus advises. Seek. Knock. There’s no way you can do this stuff on your own. You are – I am – totally dependent on God to do it in me, for me, through me. And if I can get to the point of admitting that, and asking, seeking, knocking, maybe, just maybe, I can let go of the worry.

Sufficient unto the day...or in today’s language, ‘each day has enough trouble of its own’. 

So I’m on my way out, expecting my loving heavenly Father to be with me through the day. Are you?