The morning is so beautiful. The earth is at its most glorious after a storm. The grass is greener, the yellow on the sunflower petals brighter, the sky a deep blue dotted with white and soft gray clouds, fluffy and kissed on their crowns by the sun’s hot rays. Father Sky has sketched a prize winning pastel rendering of a summertime sky, perfect in its glory.

I’ve been watching a brown oak leaf hanging under the other porch swing, performing a ballet beginning with slow adages in the breezes, then fast pirouettes as the wind picks up. Finally the leaf slows down and stops, still hanging by the strong thread of a spider’s web. Without the wind it cannot perform.

There is beauty in the wind. It makes the world dance and billows the sail boat sails. It can be exquisite or it can be a rolling tornadic monster. I think the cool quiet breezes of an early morning could be God’s whispers to wake the wondrous world each day, talking softy to the birds and the blossoms, blowing the clouds around to make a path for the sun’s golden rays.

Was reading about wind this afternoon and came across this sentence — The wind is a broom, sweeping the leaves from the sidewalk. I love that metaphor. The wind can sweep all kinds of things into our lives, including the Holy Spirit. God’s wind symbolizes the breath of life, too.

John 3:8 reads, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” I think we can compare our faith to the wind. Some of us quietly go about doing our good deeds not wanting our wind to blow anything off our path or call attention to us. We pray and seek God’s grace in our every day journey of faith, tethered to God’s kite with his wind in control.

Others of us scream our faith like a howling wind, making sure our actions are noticed and our faith proclaimed, speaking so loudly others can’t hear the quietness of God’s grace. Nature bows down to the wind and we need to bow down to God in prayer. We can be a messenger of God’s word and the power of the Holy Spirit can wash over us like the wind. God can bring change into our lives just as change happens when the wind blows.

In the Bible, God’s power is often represented as wind. We have to trust in God’s guidance and let the winds of the Holy Spirit control our direction and guide our lives. The wind blows with God’s grace.

“There are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore.” — Nicholas Sparks