The Path Of The Wind

             As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.  (Ecclesiastes 11:5)

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. (John 3:7)

When I read the verse in Ecclesiastes this morning, the verse in John came to mind. I (maybe we) tend to read the passage in John as a sarcastic, antagonistic, rebuking attack. Granted, Nicodemus was confused, but perhaps we should consider two things. First, the rabbis and Pharisees were accustomed to debate, so he might not have been as offended as some of us, in our “Thou shalt not disagree with or question ME” culture, would be.

Secondly, he would have known the verse from Ecclesiastes, so Jesus wasn’t really saying something that was entirely new. It was something Nicodemus probably never applied to himself.

And as I thought about these ideas, what came to mind is the possibility that how we decide to perceive what God says and does is not necessarily an accurate interpretation of His intent. Some might protest that if God is omniscient and all-wise, He should communicate at the level we do. The problem is that for God to do that – in more cases than we’d like to admit, we think God would have to tell us what we want to hear. Instead or walking out or shutting down, we might do well to ask the dumb questions and admit our failure of understanding. After all, none of us really know the oath of the wind – that’s why the weatherman is so often wrong. We don’t know how the body is formed- we can describe at least some of  the process, but that doesn’t mean we know how. We tend to think we know so much, or that we are a failure if we don’t know everything, but the reality is, we don’t.