The All Powerful

When I started to write my blog this morning, I fell into writing from my emotions, all spilling out from yesterday. It doesn't take a storm so epic to leave emptiness in its wake. But something epic leaves me in an incredulous state about its power. There is absolutely nothing we can do about any of the powerful things that can reshape our planet, tsunami's, hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, lightning, volcanoes, earthquakes... So why is it, that anytime such things occur, believing people begin to pray, unless they believe there is some spiritual element even more powerful. It would be easy for anyone whose house is blown away in an instant, to say, "How can a loving powerful God allow such things." Even more so if someone you love is taken.  I have been in situations that I just had to face God and say, "If you won't protect me then where do I turn?"  After particularly long times of struggle and pain in my life, I am actually glad that God doesn't mind that I cry out, "Lord, will this ever be over!?" Before it was over, I was really ready for yesterday to be over. I wanted it to just stop, as everyone across the south did.  But I couldn't draw myself away from the images of the power of a tower of spiraling wind.

 On our hawk watch, our group of friends who love to watch the raptors of every kind migrate, and are comforted that the patterns of their leaving the north in the fall, and returning from the south in the spring offer a sense of things being right in the world. Like the seasons, birds and butterflies of all kinds make the incredibly long trek. We sit and watch the skies on our hawk watch, sometimes for hours just to be able to count them, and have a bit of data that records the process and is comparable to other years. With this data, we can draw a few conclusions about when to expect certain species to be passing by our little mountain perch. There are other things that are recorded, and we can conclude from what we have seen, and we have a saying, that hawks in general, don't like to get up early to begin their migration flight. Actually, they use the early hours sometimes to find sustenence. But sometimes, they simply wait for the wind.

The truth is, that the invisible spiraling winds don't begin to rise into the immense sky until the sun has begun to warm the earth.  Warm air rises, and as it rises, it begins to make a magic elevator on which the migrating birds can be lifted to great heights, way beyond the sight of our binoculars on the warmer clearer days.  Some days the winds are not so gentle and the speed with which birds rise into the swirling thermal of air, and fly off the top is amazing. Within a few minutes a flock of hundreds can traverse the whole of the sky and be gone.
This form of spiraling wind is called "thermals." On days when the air is still, and heavy with dampness, and clouds hamper the sun's ability to form the rising columns, we watch the birds flapping and rising a hundred feet into a partially formed thermal, only to have the uplifting wind stall beneath their wings, and they literally work their way toward anything that indicates where a new thermal may be. For in the thermals, the hawks don't have to use their wings to fly by flapping them.  They spread them and allow the wind to lift them effortlessly. No doubt there are muscles at work to keep them ruddered into the wind, but far less energy is used to fly than if they have to flap the whole way. In fact, I am sure they were DESIGNED to make use of the wind, in order to be able to go the distance.

Perhaps it isn't difficult to see where I am going with this. The same wind that makes thermals, is the same wind that makes tornadoes.  Although it is pushed along by the energy in the storm, and far too intense to allow a bird to be safely transported, the winds draw in and lift the things in their path.  And as I saw with my own eyes yesterday, you may not see or hear a tornado until it begins to fill with debris or dirt, or something that makes it visible.

Jesus compared faith to these powerful elements of the natural workings of our earth. Believing in God is like believing in wind. We can't see it. But we know it is there when we feel it or see it's mighty power. Sometimes, I need the power of faith that is more like the gentle rising spiraling thermal to uplift me and extend my strength for the journey. To raise me to the heights where I can see the next thermal, or fly off the top and sail for miles effortlessly on the wind beneath my wings, (to borrow a phrase) until I need to find another thermal. Sometimes, I fly alone, but sometimes I find myself amidst hundreds like myself who seek the power of the thermal to lift them as well. With hawks we call the mass of birds swirling around and around on the invisible vortex of wind a kettle, because they look like things being stirred about in a pot of water that has been stirred "til the water has formed a vortex. They look like they are in a kettle. When the birds gather, we call it "kettling." And no matter how many birds I have seen in a kettle, I have never seen the wind that was lifting them run out of the power to lift them.

It is the uniqueness of the thermal that gives the birds the height and renewal they need. Wind that rises, or simply gets higher as it goes over a mountain for instance, doesn't necessarily give the lift the birds are looking for. In fact, turbulences that zap their energy may be the consequence of riding into the winds coming over a ridge. We have seen hawks drop several feet sometimes when they encounter a loss of their wind advantage. It is in fact that the wind spirals when warmed by the sun (Son) that lift is acheived. Anything that blocks the movement of that wind, breaks it up, and hampers it's usefulness. So hawks seek thermals and  enter near the bottom of the vortex. They ride the wind around and around and up until they reach the top, for however long it takes to reach the top, before they "peel off," with wings outspread, riding on air.

In other words, Jesus would teach us that in order for our faith to be renewed we have to stay a while in the place of power, and renewal until we have reached the height spiritually that we are able to head in our intended direction, far above the mountain tops. And in that vortex of spiritual wind, we rise rested, and able to see far along the path to which we are destined to go. The point would be to seek the rising power of the wind. And ride it. The wind is likened to the Holy Spirit in scripture. By seeking him and staying with him for a while, all the way to the top of the thermal, we get the power we need to go on.

So yesterday, I wondered, what spiritual significance a tornado could possibly have in helping me understand the Holy Spirit's work in my life. I didn't have to think about it long as I watched it take whole towns to a place where they will have to start over. Sometimes I need the incredible, super powerful, able to move huge things, kind of power from the Holy Spirit. I think we forget just how powerful, our God is to be able to remove massive amounts of everything in our lives, not for our detriment, but for us to have a place of renewal. A Clean Slate on which to rebuild and start over. When the perils of life destroy our dreams, take away our vision of who we are and what we have in this world, there is God, powerful enough to wipe every bit of what we were depending on, resting our futures on, off the map. Powerful enough to make us focus on Him. To see His power. To feel His power, and in the old Testament verbage, to fear His awesome power. It is the same thing, a tornado and a thermal. They both are the made of the same thing, wind. They both have the same invisible power to lift to heights that which they are meant to lift. One seems to be for good, and one seems to be for evil. But every time I saw people who emerged from that destructive power and their mind was on God, praising Him for saving them from the storm, I was made aware that we really do know who has the power to lift us from the rubble, to help us start when all we have is a clean slate. We know who is more powerful. Nothing of the old exists, only God and our future.

Today, I thank God that just as nothing can stand in the way of storms like those yesterday, there is nothing that can stand in the way of a God who is big enough to lift us up to new heights out of the nothingness they left behind. Let us be comforted that the seasons of life, steady and full of newness come between the storms. Let us find the gentle Spirit and abide in him for a while, til we reach new heights where we can fly without struggling against the wind, but rather gliding, soaring on top of it. Lord lift us up, from the sadness and devastation, and help us to repeat to ourselves, "My God is more powerful than the most powerful Storms." Lord make our faith just as strong as any tornado the face of this earth has ever seen, because it is you who dwells in us to give us that power beyond anything we can imagine. Just when we can't imagine, help us use that image of a powerful tornado to give us strength to believe. Let us not forget. Lord be there for these people needing you, anyone needing you, in a powerful way, a more powerful way than that which has caused turbulence and devastation in their lives, (and for me as well). AMEN