Have you ever thought much about the wind?
It really is quite an amazing thing. In its most endearing state, this invisible force wraps around your shoulders and gently caresses your face before it is gone. Sometimes it tussles your hair or brushes against your legs. It can literally swirl around you as if engaging and inviting you to dance…
At other times, the wind can be fierce, blowing hard against you and knocking you off your path. It can most assuredly usher you inside as you seek shelter away from it. It can rattle your house and make you long for it to stop. On a mildly cold day, a sharp wind can cut right through you and quite literally take your breath away. An invisible force that barrels down the road whipping up little tornadoes of leaves or snow or dirt. What it moves, is often its only record…
It was many years ago when I was looking at Genesis that I felt this little nudge to look deeper into the words that described God in the garden. It is goes something like this:
“When they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze…” Genesis 3:8 (The Message)
Notice that it doesn’t say that Adam and Eve saw God. Instead, it says that they heard Him strolling in the evening breeze. It seems as if His Presence in the wind alerted them to His coming near. The Hebrew word, “ruwach”, is most associated with wind. The definition describes it almost as an exhalation. In the King James, it is often cited as “air, anger, blast, breath, cool, courage, mind, quarter, side, spirit(ual), tempest, vain, whirl wind.”
It was there that I realized God and His Presence, in how He moves in our lives, is often like the wind and how it works. It is almost impossible to capture, and without some sort of debris or something caught up in it–the very movement of an object–we are unable to see it coming or going. Most of the time, we can only hear or feel its effects as it touches us directly. And as the Hebrew word describes so well, there is nothing quite like the gentle breeze on a warm day to cool your skin. With just the right touch, a breeze can delight and relieve the soul alleviating it from the heat that may be pressing upon it…or it can cut right through and challenge the very life of the flesh and the soul.
When I started Families Building Faith, it was with a distinct vision. It is nice to congregate together and friendships are important to develop, but what I felt was crucial was time together in His word for those who longed for it. Not in judgment or in competitiveness and comparison or in a rigid outline that leaves little room to explore, but in pondering, thinking on, and mulling over. Time together spent challenging each other to go deeper and see how the word might be speaking to our very lives…yes, often, in the need for change, repentance, courage, and truth.
And I was well aware of how easy it is to look at His truth, as James says, giving it a quick glance in the mirror and then forgetting it. How easy it is to apply it to everyone else and not ourselves. So God laid it on my heart that as wonderful and life-changing as being in His word is, His word has to be put into practice in our lives. Truly, Bible study serves ourselves. His word is a gift to the health of the soul. Fellowship gatherings serve to knit us together and grow community…again, something we all need. Both things are useful and important, but serving others, that is where we get to be a part of God’s gentle movement in the lives outside of our own. Time and time again, over the last ten years, I have had my breath taken away as I have caught a blessed glimpse of God moving in the life of another…
It is there as He does a little dance with the soul of another–often bringing them hope to the moment that they feel so desperately without. It is there that I see His Presence in a way that mesmerizes and builds my faith. But not just my faith alone.
It is in the little boy or girl who builds a basket and is utterly overwhelmed by the beauty they created with all of the different items God has brought. It is in the eyes of the adults as they stand in awe of what they are seeing, hearing me say: “This really is not us. We play a small role, and if you don’t believe me, trust me that I cannot move the hearts, hands and feet of the people who repeatedly come. You know how comfortable the couch is, and it is not me making them get up.”
It is in the souls that we have come to know that have been told they are too young or too old or too sickly or too unable where we have seen God gently breathe new life into them, showing them that what they have to offer is important in what He is doing…
It is in the faces of those who go with us to deliver and see the burned out houses, the rundown areas, and then understand more deeply why the wind is so very much needed there. It is in the twinkling smiles of the children and the tender downcast faces of the adults that brighten as we watch God’s Spirit refresh in only ways that He can.
It is in the words: “It was as if you knew everything about me when you built this basket!”, “This is my favorite color!”, or “I have been wanting one of these so badly!” Those statements that humble our souls and make us drop to our knees understanding that He is moving in ways that we cannot control, anticipate or even know…much like the wind.
I stood in the basement the other day encouraging a small group to continue to do outreach together, explaining to them that while I wholeheartedly love the discussion of His word with others…it is in selfless serving that I see faith grow the most. And isn’t that what we should be striving for? To grow our faith and the faith of others…
You see, there is truly nothing quite like watching God move in your life and in the life of another, briefly intertwining the two, often to the benefit of each other. That is what outreach should be all about…the breath of God moving through lives for the world to see. That we may perceive and know that God is connecting all of these dots in amazing ways that you couldn’t fully see beforehand, and then, in His timing, you begin to understand the coolness that has just touched another’s cheek. You feel the breeze and, for a moment, you see it…the smile, the relief, the tears, the awe, the truth that somehow a need or desire has been met in a way that only God can do.
And it as if you are standing in His garden watching faith grow…
Where you feel, hear and catch a glimpse of His power and majesty strolling through the life of another in the gentle, refreshing Presence of an evening breeze…