Winds of Change and the Beginning of All New Things

Palm Springs Wind Turbines

Winds of change.

I know that my writing professor would want me to come up with a better opening line.  Winds of change is such an over-used literary phrase for something new that is about to blow in.

Which I hope is true.

The new part.

I'm not so sure about embracing the change part.

I thought I had things pretty figured out for the next few months but the wind is blowing and I'm feeling like a dust speck caught up in currents in which I have no control.

Last week was a big week of no.

"No" to a writing project that had consumed more months than I want to contemplate. Months of reading. Researching. Writing. Praying. Listening. A season where I think I heard God, but now I'm not so sure.

The week ended in a book festival where I didn't sell anything.

Not. One. Single. Copy.

A big no event climaxing a week of no.

I have been around this life-thing long enough to realize that seasons of no aren't forever and that a no is often a prelude to a different yes.

A yes that isn't possible without the no.

But that doesn't mean I have to like it. That it isn't difficult. Or sad. Or hard.

My current reality does not contain the yes that I wanted or worked toward.

Sometimes a no just plain stinks.

After the hard no of last week, we went on a short trip to California to celebrate a double family birthday. On the way home, we passed the wind turbines on Interstate 10 near Palm Springs, not just a handful, but 4000 of these metal behemoths whose main function is to collect the wind in this windiest section of California--the San Gorgonio Pass, an area between the San Jacinto and San Gorgonio mountains.

In this section of the United States, the warm desert air mixes with the cooler coastal air. Areas of high pressure move to areas of low pressure. The result?

Wind. Winds of change.

Winds of change that are harvested by the turbines with enough power to provide all the electricity for Palm Springs and the surrounding Coachella Valley.

Pressure sometimes provides impressive results. (Which could be another blog post!) In the darkness of all things before the beginning of time, Genesis records that God's Spirit was present.

Earth was a soup of nothingness,

a bottomless emptiness,

an inky blackness.

God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. Genesis 1:2 (MSG)

 The Hebrew word for "spirit" is ruach, which means wind or breath.

The wind of God was there before there was even light. The breathing and creative God of All That Is Not Yet was there in the emptiness. In the darkness.  Brooding. Hovering.

Wind preceded light.

Change before revelation.

Winds of change.

In my life.

In yours.

Ruach at the beginning of all new things.