Of Wind Chimes and Flash Floods

 

The wind blows to and fro, chiming just one note. Over and over. Simple.

Now with more gusto it moves, a discordant song it composes, yet still confined to a few predetermined notes. Back and forth, gently. Chime, chime, chime, chime.

Who knows where the wind blows. The gentle caress of the Spirit. Urging, pushing, enveloping.

The wind, the Spirit. Sometimes it brings rain, sometimes snow. Sometimes it draws heat from the desert. Up and up. Drawing into itself moisture, clouds rising higher and higher, until the clouds can hold no more. Then down it pours, a river falls from the sky. The parched dry earth cannot receive it all. Walls of water descend steep narrow canyons. Tearing, uprooting, carrying - effortlessly in the churning froth anything that would stand in the way.

Out of the heart flows a continuous unceasing flash flood of water. We try and stop up the flow, to limit it; after all we want to be dignified, sedate, peaceful, gentle.

Yet the Spirit will not be stopped, eventually He will break down the dam we erect, he will force open the valves we have shut. Even as the magma beneath Mt. Saint Helens opened a crack to the surface, he will shake us and rock us until he finds a way out – released.

Be glorified in me! Be released! May I be a conduit, may you be released from my heart to inundate the world.

In the first Flood, He destroyed the inhabitants of the earth because of His wrath and anger.

The second Flood. The flood of His love that is now inundating the earth began as a seemingly small thing one dark mid-day as one man died on a cross. Jesus the God-man died that we might live. As His love washes over us we die to self to live in Him.

In death we experience life. We drown in His love. We drink of His living water, a deadly poison to self, that transforms our very spiritual DNA from death to life. Flesh to spirit, we become like Him, the author of life. No longer is it we who live, He lives through us. He resides in us, so that He can be released from us. We become carriers of the living water, the flood of love that is inundating the earth.

lmv - August 11, 2007