SURRENDERING TO THE WIND

It wasn’t until I first used a leaf blower that I fully appreciated the old cliché’, may the wind be at your back. As I strap on my backpack blower on and set out to de-leaf an empty parking lot on a windy day, it’s with great pleasure that I humbly yield with the direction of the wind!

This summer, as I’ve continued to train my son in the practical techniques of lawn-care, he quickly recognized the futility of straining against the wind. But lawn-care professionals aren’t alone in their struggle against the wind. In chapter eight of Luke’s gospel we find skilled fishermen cowering under a fierce wind that Jesus would later calm. Later in the Gospel of John we are told that the Spirit of God is like a wind that blows where it pleases. Finally, in Acts 27 when the apostle Paul and some other prisoners had to sail past the island of Cyprus, it was because the winds were too strong for them to make a safe landing.

Struggling against the wind will always require that one work harder, take longer, expend more energy, and ultimately frustrate a person into forced capitulation. The same can be said of us when we struggle against the Spirit of God and His plan and purpose for our life. Perhaps it’s a fear that He might call us to be a missionary to Africa that keeps us from unselfishly yielding to His finest direction for our lives. But I have to ask as we, issue by issue and desire after desire defer to His superior rationale aren’t we always the winner? Just as with the wind the more frequently we yield to its supremacy to faster we give up our limited potential and become one with His.

I’d like to leave you with a poem by and unknown author I discovered this week simply entitled, Surrender:

“When I stand at the judgment seat of Christ And He shows me His plan for me; The plan of my life as it might have been Had He had His way, and I see How I blocked Him here and I checked Him there And I would not yield my will, Shall I see grief in my Savior's eyes; Grief though He loves me still? Oh, He'd have me rich, and I stand there poor, stripped of all but His grace, While my memory runs like a hunted thing down the paths I can't retrace. Then my desolate heart will well-nigh break with tears that I cannot shed. I'll cover my face with my empty hands and bow my uncrowned head. No. Lord of the years that are left to me I yield them to Thy hand. Take me, make me, mold me to the pattern Thou hast planned.”