Learning to Let the Wind Blow Through You
Posted on Mar 14, 2024 by Jon Brudvig
Walking the country roads of Kansas has helped me to appreciate the power of antiquated windmills. I am fascinated by windmills because I, like Don Quixote, the eccentric “mad knight” in the musical Man of La Mancha, find myself tilting at the windmills that come my way more often than I would like them to. The adversaries, both real and imagined, are worthy opponents, often showing up without warning in the guise of unexpected detours, obstacles, and challenges that test me to the core. And though I, and perhaps some of you, have been brought to my knees on more than one occasion by the sting of vicious assaults devilishly designed to crush the human spirit or to separate us from the love of one another, I have somehow managed to persist in the face of life’s storms.
In these moments I find it comforting to remember why the broken and dilapidated windmills still tower over the prairie landscape. Though battered and worn, windmills have survived the onslaught of blizzards, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and never-ending wind gusts for a practical reason — they have learned to let the wind blow through them. Joseph Marshall, author of The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living, writes, “If you learn to let the wind blow through you, you will take away its power to blow you down.”
Joseph Marshall is right. Learning to let the storms of life blow through you without destroying you is the key to resilience. Like the battered windmills defiantly resisting the fiercest of storms, we, too, can summon the strength and inner fortitude to persist and survive even the most daunting challenges.
And for Christians, it begins and ends with Jesus. Though life is not always fair or predictable, God in Christ promises to abide with us always. And while so much of what is happening around us is beyond our ability to control, clinging to the promise of God’s abiding presence in our lives assures that we are never alone.
While we may not be able to predict or stop the storms of life from leaving debris trails of heartache, loss, and grief, clinging to the promise of God’s abiding and loving presence, if only by the thinnest of threads, helps us to summon the strength to persist, to endure, and to take the next step in faith.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon