I can hear the spring wind building before I feel the freshening breeze upon my face. It stirs the trees in the orchard and sends before itself a million soft sighings. And, as it passes on, I sit in the calm once again even as I hear it moving on to ruffle yet another tree-clad hillside.
I feel the wind, I hear it, But I don’t know its origin or its destination. Why, then, must I labor so diligently to understand God’s Spirit which he tells me to accept as freely and as innocently as a child free in the springtime? Why should I fear the ceasing of words when it was not I but the Spirit who caused their appearance?
O Father, make me as free, as trusting, and as pliant as the tall sycamore swaying gently in the caressing wind! Standing there on the creek bank, its roots exposed by years of springtime flooding, it offers me its gift of hope. Help me to remember it when my own floods come. Or when the soft breezes of the spirit become gales of sorrow or pain.
It is beautiful here. No sound but the busy scurrying of last year’s leaves as they tumble and dance before the wind. The trees, bare of leaves, create their own beauty as each stands in the uniqueness of its construction.
And through it all flows the living water. The soft sound of its voice soothes my mind and stills my soul. And I rise renewed. Was it so with you, Jesus? Is that why you withdrew to those wilderness mountains?
Exceprt from SPLINTERS OF LIGHT c.2011 by Donna Swanson
