I don’t particularly like it when the wind is blowing at night. I lie in bed listening to watering cans clattering across the back yard, rubbish bins being blown over. I can see all my recycling rubbish being strewn across the neighbouring fields. I live in a sturdy house but it still feels like one of those three little pigs whose house was blown down .
Wind is noisy, it’s disruptive, it’s a little scary, but it’s not visible.
The Holy Spirit on that Pentecost day was noisy – there was the sound of a violent wind, not outside but inside the house. It was disruptive – it changed those who were there and others from that moment on, they were never the same. It was probably quite scary – violent wind INSIDE the house? And it was not visible – at least the wind was not visible.
I do enjoy walking along the seafront on a blustery day, or climbing a hillside, standing at the summit with the wind blowing all around me.
It is exhilarating and exciting. It’s not something you would want to do if you wanted to keep your hair neatly in place. It feels cleansing, we talk about “blowing the cobwebs away.” After a walk in the countryside on a blustery day, you end up with windswept hair and rosy cheeks. It makes you feel refreshed, renewed, cleansed even.
Is this how the apostles felt after the wind had blown around and through them? It may well have been, but unlike my blustery hillside walk, the effect on them was dramatically transformative for ever.
Wind is powerful and uncontrollable. It has great energy within it. Most onshore wind turbines can turn the energy from the wind into about 2-3 megawatts of electricity, which is around 6 million kilowatt hours per year, or enough electricity to power 1500 homes with electricity. We may think we can control the wind, but we can only control what it can do for us. If the wind drops then the electricity supply drops. We cannot control the direction or the strength with which it blows.
We may put up barriers to receiving the Holy Spirit, we may try and direct how or what the Holy Spirit does, but we cannot stop the Holy Spirit working once we have allowed the wind of the Spirit to blow through us.
Prayer: Transforming God, send down the wind that renews, refreshes and revitalises. May your Spirit blow away the cobwebs of complacency and disturb the barriers that we try to erect, so that we can emerge with rosy cheeks and new energy ready to do your work. AMEN