There is a song we used to sing at camp when I was a girl. It goes like this:
Where does the wind come from? Does anybody know?
Where does the wind come from when it starts to blow?
On Saturday night, where does he hang his hat?
Does anybody know where the wind is at?
Where does the wind come from? Does anybody know?
OHHHHHHHH
Did you know that there are 56 Bible verses about wind! Among the most well known would be Moses’ parting of the Red Sea. And who can forget the sound of the “violent rushing wind” the disciples heard the day the Holy Spirit came upon them? It was the wind that dried up the earth following Noah’s flood. And it was Jesus who commanded the wind to stop on the stormy Galilean Sea as terrified disciples looked on.
The wind comes up in our scripture this morning from John 3:8:
“The wind blows all around us as if it has a will of its own’ we feel and hear it, but we do not understand where it has come from or where it will end up.”
Scientifically, the wind is no mystery. It is defined as the horizontal movement of the earth’s gases – otherwise known as air. I found this explanation of wind on YouTube. Let’s listen:
Where is all of this going? Let’s finish the scripture we just read Starting from the beginning of John 3:8:
“The wind blows all around us as if it has a will of its own’ we feel and hear it, but we do not understand where it has come from or where it will end up. Life in the Spirit is as if it was the wind of God.”
The Greek word used in this scripture is “pneuma” spelled p-n-e-u-m-a. As it turns out, this Greek word is used interchangeably for Spirit, breath and wind throughout the New Testament. In this verse the Spirit is the Wind and the Wind is the Spirit. We can assume its meaning to be the breath of God.
I was utterly captured by this verse: “Life in the Spirit is as if it was the wind of God.” There is a certain mystery to it and I wanted to know it better. I did some contemplative reflection on this, exploring the question “What does it mean to have “life in the Spirit?” This is what I learned.
The first thing I figured out is that breath and spirit gives us life. We are speaking of two kinds of life: physical life and spiritual life. God gives us both. The first thing that happens when we are born is that we take a life-giving breath into our infant lungs. As long as we continue to breathe oxygen into our lungs, we live. And when it is our time of physical death, we take our last breath. God gives us physical life. The birth of spiritual life isn’t so different. Instead of breathing oxygen into our lungs, we breathe the Holy Spirit into our hearts. The big difference is that our spiritual lives never end. God gives us Eternal Life. Life in the Spirit is breathing in the life-giving Holy Spirit into our hearts.
Another thing I learned about life in the Spirit is that there is movement within. Movement implies going from one place to another. While we certainly think of this in terms of geographic or physical movement, it comes in other forms, too. Movement is nothing more than change – perhaps a change of heart or a change of mind or a change of attitude. We might experience it as a nudge, or an ah-ha moment, or a moment of inspiration, or a thought or idea you just can’t get rid of. I think the key to life in the Spirit is paying attention to the movement and then accepting that it comes from God. It is the Holy Spirit that moves in us. Living in the Spirit means listening to the Holy Spirit within.
A third explanation for life in the Spirit is Outside is Inside. Ever heard the phrase “what you see is what you get.” Or, “beauty is only skin deep?” One implies that what you see on the outside is who you are on the inside. The other suggests that the outside image is not the truth of who you really are. To have integrity in life means that how others see us is fully congruent with God’s creation that is you. How we live our life is a reflection of the Holy Spirit within. Life in the Spirit means our outside matches our inside – that we have this integrity about life that is fully visible through our actions.
The last thought I had is that there is a freshness to life in the Spirit. In Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus said;
“…only someone who experiences birth for a second time can hope to see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
To which Nicodemus said: “huh?”
There is a lot of commentary on what it means to be born again. I loved clarity and simplicity of this description:
A person once born has physical life.
A person twice born has eternal life.
What I figured out is that born again doesn’t happen just once in a lifetime. It happens every day as we awake from sleep to the freshness of a brand new day. Every day we have a choice about how we will be in the world. We choose to be positive or we choose to be angry. We choose to live in gratitude, or we choose to live in fear. We choose to be open to the possibilities of a brand new day or we choose to camp out in yesterday’s resentments. When we allow ourselves to approach each new day as a gift from God, we live a life in the Spirit. Everyday we get to push the reset button.
This Lenten season, as we explore pushing our spiritual limits, I encourage you to practice living a life in the Spirit: to breathe, to pay attention to the movement within, to let your inside show on the outside, and to be born new each day.