Carla Beard and I decided to challenge each other to write something on the same topic each week--no word limit or minimum. This was my first attempt to get myself back into the habit of writing. I will leave it to her to post her devotional about wind.
Where the Wind Blows
Comfort is nearly always found in the
familiar; and if one thing is familiar to Texans, it would be the wind! From
the gentlest breezes in autumn piling up dry leaves on the ground to the
roaring gales of storm winds howling overhead during the spring, the winds are
a constant. Whether cooling breezes off the lakes in the summer or wintery
blasts carrying ice shards through the air, the wind is an accepted factor of
living. Hummingbirds, butterflies, or flying seed pods of milk weed and
dandelion, all these take turns tumbling with the vagaries of the winds. Dust
brought from the flat lands of the Texas Panhandle coat the plains of Central
Texas, while the pollution of the larger cities is whisked from the air by that
same broom so that the wind is both a charming house keeper and a drying blast sucking
up the moisture needed for growth in the fields. No amount of contempt will
allow a Texan to take the wind for granted, no matter how familiar its patterns
might seem.
Assigning the wind a personality
purely based on a skewed perspective, most of mankind alternately consider the
wind either a foe or an indentured servant. Modern Don Quixotes have built
windmills in the form of wind farms to harness the forces seemingly ever
present; yet despite whacking birds and drying some of the moisture from the
air, these wind turbines have no more real effect on the winds than the sails
of the schooners on the high seas had back when men were more helplessly
dependent in their scuttling over the face of the deep. The wind is not some
insidious power against which injustice can be claimed—despite the hurricanes,
cyclones, and tornadoes; it simply moves across the face of the earth from
corner to corner. However much man may attempt to change one form of energy
into another, he may never really change or hold back that which God has put
into play in His creation. Unlike the Spirit of God that hovered over the face
of the waters, man’s tracks on the seas—just like his tracks through the skies--are
washed away as quickly as the next wave or the next current of air. Something
about the wind provides perspective like nothing else. Even in Texas, our size,
our worth, all our imaginings compare as nothing when that sudden sound “as a
mighty rushing wind” fills our hearts and minds.
When our most creative minds attempt
to paint the wind or describe its effects, they may portray a whisper among the
flowers and grasses or the swaying or twisting of trees to some degree of
bending acquiesce. The mood of a narrative may be brought unforgettably to mind
with the description of wind and its effects upon the landscape. Belligerent
resistance to wind, as in Wuthering Heights, or protective escape from its grip
quite often remind a reader of experiences common to anyone able to participate
in what is referred to as weather. Just
like the house in Wuthering Heights, which had to be strong to stand against
the wind, the Bronté characters who loved the moors had to be strong and
independent. But that same wind twisted trees and characters alike over time. When
a non-fictional wind blows--the Chinook stirring from the southwest of Canada
or the Zephyr blowing across Texas, those in the paths of these winds either
must submit or resist—or at the very least, take cover!
Just like many other powers seen and felt but never truly
understood—among them light, love, dreams, and even sleep—the wind seems surely
eternal and immutable. Hardly does the wind ever cease its
movements. In fact, that sudden calm before the storm or a lull in the wind
generally creates a discomforting expectation among man and beast alike. Perhaps
some ingrained sense warns that only a divine intervention can constrain a compulsion
created for constant movement. But truly the wind will cease to blow one day
for a time “for four angels will hold the four winds of the earth that the wind
should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree.” Like any of the
creative acts of God, the sudden observable beginning or cessation among the
elements of nature becomes a sign to mankind.
Unsettling possibilities of the unfamiliar need not be cause for
concern, however, because the Creator knows the end from the beginning—for man
and for all of creation—not just in Texas, but to the ends of the earth.
What color the wind? What message to
send?
Directed power? Who measures its
hour?
Lifting wings as the cardinal sings, Fairy
skirting to leafy wings,
Scooping out cliffs grain by grain,
Moving mists or driving rain,
Sweeping mountains or dusty plain, Driving
waves over the main—
By no man’s bridle or harness ridden—
Only to His voice wind is bidden—
Questions unnecessary, time erased
with a spirit unfearing—
Wild winds carry the Word of His
sudden appearing!
