When my cracked living room window was replaced last fall, I hardly expected it to impact my inner life. But it has, because now I have a window I can open to warm summer breezes, sounds of bird song and scents of freshly mowed grass and lilacs. A shy mourning dove has built a nest in a tree by the window where she sits patiently on her eggs. I slip behind the wafting curtain several times a day to check on her progress.
Through an open window life stirs, gracefully billowing sheer curtains, carrying wisps of sound and scent on warm fingers of air to freshen and revive a room long closed. My heart often feels like a room long closed, in need of the cleansing breath of the Spirit of God. A heart shut up grows stale and listless without fresh Spirit life to rejuvenate it.
Like a dancing breeze, the Spirit makes itself known definitely but invisibly. As I see the breeze stir the gauzy drapes at my window, so I feel the Spirit of God move my heart towards Himself. I cannot predict when He will move, but I also cannot deny when He does. By a leap of my heart, a prick of tears in my eyes, a swell of joy in my soul, He reminds me there is a spiritual realm I cannot see.
When Jesus described spiritual rebirth to Nicodemus, in John 3, He used the wind as an illustration. Nicodemus sought out Jesus after dark, perhaps on a night when a cooling breeze blew across the hills of Jerusalem. Although a learned Jewish leader, Nicodemus struggled to grasp the revolutionary concept of spiritual rebirth. He had the desire to learn from Jesus, but had yet to have his spiritual eyes opened.
Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” (John 3:5-8 NLT)
When I see evidence of the wind in the billow of curtains or the sway of trees, it reminds me of how the Holy Spirit of God transcends understanding yet shows Himself in the lives of those who love Him. He blows away the desire to sin, ushering in a fresh love for the things of God. He routs out the dust of despair to replace it with the clean aroma of Christ. Sometimes in a whirlwind, sometimes in a whispering breeze, He speaks to the soul receptive to His guidance.
I want my heart to be an open window thrown wide to the wind of God’s Spirit. There may come storms or even doldrums, but because God’s Spirit is in them I can trust they will pass and I will be enriched as a result. The mourning dove sits securely on her eggs even as the wind bounces the branches where she nests. She is at peace. And so am I, resting in the knowledge that the mighty wind of the Spirit streams from the source of all love.