On this March 1 the weather is lousy … it has rained hard all morning, the wind will nearly blow you away and now the precipitation has turned to something “ice-like.” The sun, of course, is nowhere to be seen, leaving everything in a depressing gray.
When I was in high school, our church was building a new facility of more than 20,000 square feet. Amazingly, the men of the church were building it themselves. It was a marvel. (Recently I talked with the DS from that district who told me to this day it is one of the nicest facilities on their district.)
One March afternoon several of my high school mates and I were in the church parking lot. The previous Saturday the men had put up 40 trusses, each 44 feet wide. However, they had not been able to put much plywood on the trusses, and now the March winds were really gusting. My dad was inside the building, doing all he could to brace those trusses from below.
Suddenly the front truss was lifted into the sky and the remaining ones starting collapsing on each other like falling dominoes. While they were tumbling I watched my dad running to get out. However, before he could, the walls gave way and the trusses collapsed. I ran into the building, climbing over shattered wood, trying to get to where I had last seen my dad. Amazingly, there he sat in a small space. Other than one truss slightly grazing his back, he was untouched and unharmed.
Needless to say, our family’s life could have been much different. While no one had “seen” the wind, everyone knew what had happened.
In John’s gospel, Jesus talked with Nicodemus about being “born again.” He said “the Spirit is like the wind.” That is, you know where the Spirit has been. Things are different than they were … a change has come in and to that person because he or she has been “born of the Spirit.”
Tomorrow is Billy Graham’s funeral. What a wonderful, remarkable life he lived. His message again and again was, “You must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God.” The good news is that by the grace of God anyone can be “born from above.” And with that comes a new life … a changed life.
So while I am not a big fan of “natural wind” I am a happy and convinced witness of the supernatural wind of the Spirit. You can tell where He has been … in a good way!
Geoff Kunselman