Trying to ponder on the porch this morning but the WIND…is ferocious. There are so many goldfinches on my bird feeders I just don’t want to go in the house. The sun has almost made it to the swing so I’m holding out for her warmth. The male crayon yellow goldfinches are so pretty riding the oak tree branches in the wind gusts, their yellow plumage contrasting with the spring green of the new leaves. “It’s a picture,” as Chief used to say.

The morning is so pretty, deep blue cloudless sky, bright warm sunshine. And Mother Nature is blowing her wind! The wind chime symphony is so loud I can’t hear the bird song symphony. The brown magnolia leaves are playing tag down the middle of our street. Penelope looks up to see if that noise is worth a few barks, sees nothing so she crawls back under her cover in the playpen.

The wind is at the forefront of my thoughts today. Wind gusts have moved my metal chairs all the way across the porch. I’ve been watching the different species of trees and how they react to the wind gusts. Bruce Lee says, “Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.” That’s good advice, learn to bend in the storms of life holding on to God’s hands.

I’ve watched the magnolias, the tall fir trees, the old oaks, and the bamboo forest be manipulated by the wind all afternoon. The magnolias held their own against the strong wind, bending their crowns in a circular pattern waving at me like an old friend, dropping their brown leaves in a sacrifice to the wind. The Himalayan firs in my great-grandmother’s yard stood tall and firm, singing a mountain song as the wind currents flew through their dark green spiked branches. The bamboos bent in the winds and clapped their slender branches together, their loud whispering psithurism a serenade of rustling leaves and cane clackings. And the old oaks tried not to lose their branches, twisting and bending their limbs, letting go of their mistletoe and dead branches to litter my yard.

The winds of faith blow throughout our lives, too. We are all riding a sailboat of life, pushed along by the winds of our faith, our destination heaven. When our faith is strong we know life will test us with winds of change and challenge. We weather the winds of fate all the time. Sometimes the storm’s wind push us off course and we struggle trying to correct our path. Sometimes we’re tested with calm winds that stagnate us and make us question our faith.

The winds of God’s love always surrounds us and God will always push us along our path of faith when we ask for his help. He never abandons us, we abandon him. When obstacles change our path we give up thinking God has forgotten us and we desert our faith. We have the choice of reaching out to God through our prayers, to let him guide us, keeping our sailboats on the path to heaven or we can keep our heads down and our sailboat off course as we fail our test of faith.

Sometimes we sail with the winds of faith and sometimes the winds blow against us. The most important thing is to keep believing in God, to keep moving forward in faith. Pray for the winds of hope and grace to push you along. Our destination is in his hands.

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it — but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.