WHEN A WIND COMES OUT OF NOWHERE...

We have many little hiccups leading up to our 2019 Fitzroy team to Uganda. When we boarded in Dublin for Addis Ababa and the connecting flight to Entebbe, I uttered the famous last words, "Nothing to think about now for 10 hours..." The flight was to touch down briefly in Madrid but a storm sent us off to spend a few very dull hours on the runway in Barcelona before flying back to Madrid. We were now 8 hours overdue and missing our Entebbe connection. This is my sobering meditation on such a day...

 

You can have your destination planned

And know exactly how you are getting there

Dates and times all on your ticket

“Nothing more to think about until you arrive”

Famous last words

Like certainty, 

Or ‘nothing can go wrong’

And “we have it under control”.

 

“Sometimes a wind comes out of nowhere

And knocks you off your feet”

As Bruce Cockburn sings it

It can send you off course

Divert you to somewhere off your map

Towards worry

Anger

Frustration 

And weariness.

 

That wind and where it blows you

Cannot be eradicated

Or erased

God will not shift the weather patterns of the world

For your own self indulgence

Life is not the wind that blows

But how we respond when it does.

 

“Worry,” said the Master

“Adds nothing to your circumstances but worry”

“Surmise,” he went on,

“The Uganda Cranes as the fly

Or the sunflowers as the decorate a field

No toiling or spinning

But utterly beautiful.”

“Trust,” he teaches

“Brings a peace beyond understanding”

 

The breeze of the Spirit

Where it blows, no one knows

And so it is with all of those born of the Spirit of God 

Certainty gives way

To faith

And faith was the lesson of today.