I am not a fan of these polar vortexes.  The cold is brutal, for sure.  But that’s not the worst part.  The worst part is all that wind.

Recently, a friend who is part of my faith community mentioned that she loves the wind.  Honestly, I had never met anybody who loved the wind.

I hate wind.

It makes it harder to shoot basketball outside.  Golf, a ridiculously difficult sport, becomes exponentially more difficult.  Running into the wind? No thank you.  Cross wind on a bike while a semi is crowding you?  Treacherous.  Sleep?  Forget about it.

The first year we moved to Virginia, I woke up to a morning that was zero degrees.  Not one.  Not negative one.  Zee-row.  I braced myself as I stepped outside to walk to work.  But it was a blue sky and a still morning, and so I was surprised to find how easy it was to walk on such a zero degree day.  For a California boy, I was fairly proud of my ruggedness.  I walked to work.  It was zero.  I’m going to tell a few people about this.

The next morning was zero as well.  And again, blue sky.  But when my rugged self stepped out to walk to work that morning, I was hit with a twenty mile an hour head wind.

I barely made it.

And yet here come someone who loves the wind.  And before I could push back with all of the above, I allowed her statement to reframe wind for me…if just for a moment.

As I’ve mentioned before, I find it rather profound that the word for “spirit” in both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures can also mean “wind.”  Ruach.  Pneuma.  Not only so, but when Jesus wants to describe for us what the Spirit is like, he uses the image of wind to describe Her.

And that got me to thinking about when the wind usually shows up (at least in this part of the country).  It shows up most commonly in the winter and spring.  It is strongest when things are seemingly dying, and when they mysteriously seem to come back to life.  Sleep and awakening.  Death and life.  Burial and rebirth. This is the seasonal context of wind.

And so today, during this “polar vortex from hell”, as I listen to the wind reverberate against my office, and feel it pour through a nearby light socket, I am allowing my disdain for it to be reframed.  I am allowing the wind to be a reminder that in the midst of a world that can be marked by death and decay, disappointment and discouragement…the Spirit is still moving, is still hovering over the chaos, is still beckoning life from its dormancy under my feet.

Something new, just under the surface. The Spirit is drawing and birthing and resurrecting beauty that will take the wind right out of our lungs…and transplant it directly into our spirits.

So…

…as you think about his passing, as you hunch over under the weight of another failure, as you wither at what looks like a dead end, as you despair that nothing is ever going to change…

…may you listen to the wind leaning against your home, feel it needling your face, see it bending the world in a singular direction, and allow it to be a reminder to you that the Spirit is present—even now—breathing something new right beneath the surface of your frozen soil.