March 2023
“The winds of March are wild and strong…” –Annette Wynne
Dear Friends
Here on the Palos Verdes Peninsula we seem to be in a season of toppled trees and broken branches, pine needle carpets, and falling cones. Wind can be exhilarating, soothing, frightening, piercing. It can lift and twirl, race and reduce, dance and delight. It can be barely noticeable or violently intrusive. It can be experienced both as a gift and a threat.
Jesus is recorded as having remarked, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who has been born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) Perhaps he was suggesting that life with God involves a great deal of mystery. As wind blew over the face of the deep “in the beginning,” so do we also experience God’s creative power moving over and through us in amazing, but not entirely explainable, ways.
These days, enough is known about air molecules and air pressure to be able to predict when the wind is likely to arise and anticipate something of where it is going, but our experience of wind still reminds us that forces bigger than ourselves are at work in the world. We can be glad for Jesus’ reassurance that God is among those forces, even if we cannot necessarily see God or fully understand God’s processes.
God is making us new, says Jesus. God is inviting us into eternal life. God is whirling us around and communicating with us in energetic ways so that we can truly comprehend how much God loves the world. “God loves the world so much,” proclaims Jesus in the Gospel of John, “that he gave his only Son … not to condemn the world but that the whole world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17)
God wants to save the world! May the winds of March awaken in us a fresh awareness of that wonderful news.
With you in Christ’s service,
