“Soaring On The Wind”

Originally Posted June 22, 2020

If you’ve been to the chapel at St. Joseph’s, you’ll recall the large glass windows behind the altar overlooking mountains in the distance with the beautiful and huge sky overhead. It’s always a bit of a challenge for me to keep my mind on the Lord and not get distracted with the view and activity out the window. 

Today I did pretty well until the end of my time when I noticed  a large hawk soaring  in the sky. It was magnificent. It kept catching the wind and climbing higher and higher and then circling around…down and up. It almost never flapped its wings…it just kept catching the currents. 

I recall the passage from John chapter 3….“The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with ever one who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) The wind is mysterious. The Hawk just allows the wind to take it wherever…not fighting, but allowing it to carry him. The same with the Holy Spirit. If we allow it, it takes us to the place that God decides we need to be .…. great places with wonderful discoveries and newness…beyond what we could imagine. 

So here we are in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, in a place that few of us could ever have imagined… at a time when the church has been decimated with scandal… a time of social unrest in our nation…. at a time of confusion with many of our nation’s leaders rejecting the laws of God. Yet the Holy Spirit is with us until the end of the age. The great Holy Spirit is not dismayed by any of this confusion and sin. The Holy Spirit is the wind that can take us to where he wants us to be to accomplish the will of God. So these can be the best of days for us. These can be the days that we are able to accomplish many things for God,… times when we can bring Christ’s love to those who are hurting. Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful. This is very good news.