God's Winds that Lift Us to Higher Levels
Those
who fly through the air in airships tell us that one of the first rules they
learn is to turn their ship toward the wind, and fly against it. The wind lifts
the ship up to higher heights. Where did they learn that? They learned it from
the birds. If a bird is flying for pleasure, it goes with the wind. But if the
bird meets danger, it turns right around and faces the wind, in order that it
may rise higher; and it flies away towards the very sun.
Sufferings
are God's winds, His contrary winds, sometimes His strong winds. They are God's
hurricanes, but they take human life and lift it to higher levels and toward
God's heavens.
You
have seen in the summer time a day when the atmosphere was so oppressive that
you could hardly breathe? But a cloud appeared on the western horizon and that
cloud grew larger and threw out rich blessing for the world. The storm rose,
lightning flashed and thunder pealed. The storm covered the world, and the
atmosphere was cleansed; new life was in the air, and the world was changed.
Human
life is worked out according to exactly the same principle. When the storm
breaks the atmosphere is changed, clarified, filled with new life; and a part
of heaven is brought down to earth. --Selected
Obstacles
ought to set us singing. The wind finds voice, not when rushing across the open
sea, but when hindered by the outstretched arms of the pine trees, or broken by
the fine strings of an Aeolian harp. Then it has songs of power and beauty. Set
your freed soul sweeping across the obstacles of life, through grim forests of
pain, against even the tiny hindrances and frets that love uses, and it, too,
will find its singing voice. --Selected
Be like a bird that, halting in its flight,
Rests on a bough too slight,
And feeling it give way beneath him sings,
Knowing he hath wings.
Photo by D.F.G. Hailson
From Streams in the Desert
Photo by D.F.G. Hailson
From Streams in the Desert