Sunday, February 18, 2018

Resurrected Devotional

I pulled this one up from four years ago.  The wind is not blowing this morning but the sleeplessness rages just as though it were.  Up way too early-- three something-- drinking tea and hoping for a calming effect that will allow me to return to bed and to sleep soonest.  Happy Sunday!

 Wind

WOOOO.  WOO. wooo.  WOOOO. The wind howls and WEEE. WEE. whines around the eaves and gutters.  It slaps my window and howls some more; I pound my pillow with my fist.  I flop.  I put the pillow over my head.  The wind yet howls and whines.

Wide awake, body desperate for sleep.  The mind kicks into gear.  These words of Jesus impinge themselves upon my consciousness:

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: John 3:8a (KJV)

And finally sometime before dawn I slept a bit.  Yet I will have a long morning, nodding and groggy, for I was short-changed of sleep.

The scripture quoted here is wrested and wrenched from context, such doings being the sport of many Christians who are too concerned with finding a tidbit in the Bible that seems to support what they want to believe.  But that is another chipmunk running across the trail.  The big game to be pursued here is this.  The third chapter of John recounts the incident in which Nicodemus sought Jesus out by night and asserted that he knew that Jesus was from God.

Jesus outlines precisely what one must do to enter the Kingdom, stating that one must be born not only of flesh, but he must be born again, in the Spirit.

The entire message of salvation is delineated in this chapter.

WOOO.  WOO.  Weee.  The wind still blows. And the truth of Christ's teaching still endures, and shall endure aeons after this wind ceases.

4 comments:

Sharkbytes said...

My takeaway from the wind verse has always been that God's ways are often beyond knowing. Although the wind is bound by strict rules of physics, they are hard to understand (and I've done a bit of computer modeling of systems like that- groundwater plumes which are more controlled than wind), so also is God bound by his nature (I know that sounds funny... but it's the precursor to one of those lists of things God cannot do), so its best not to second-guess God, but the better we know him, the better we can predict (discern) his will.

vanilla said...

Sharkey, I appreciate your comment very much. It points to the greater truth of the nature of our God. I have actually written down a list of things God cannot do because, as you put it, He is bound by his nature! To know Him is the answer to all our concerns, to second-guess Him is way outside our purview. Blessings.

Vee said...

Good the second time around. I always appreciate your insight.

vanilla said...

Vee, I am pleased that it still "speaks" to you.