Blown Away

I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of … occasional blogging.  The problem with this sporadic style, of course, is that whenever one goes for more than a week without a single post, each day thereafter adds more and more pressure along with more and more difficulty in returning to that ever taunting “New Post” page.  Yet, with the commencement of the autumnal breezes and the schedules they must push us into, I feel the need to rekindle my writing here.  It’s been a Summer of hand-written journal-keeping, which has indeed played its part in keeping my fingers off the keyboard, but I’m hoping to find some room in my life now for both venues of thought.   So here I am (wondering how many times I’ve said that, and how many times I’ll have to say it again…).  

Winds also blow about on the Ring of Kerry in Co. Kerry, Ireland.

I’ve been forced to think about those autumnal breezes a lot lately, as they’ve really been kicking up around here.  And by breezes, I mean blasts.  Chicago isn’t called the “Windy City” for nothing, people!  Friday on my way to work, I nearly got blown off of my bike about five times while I pushed through the wind as though I were under water.  The wind tunnels created by the tall buildings scattered throughout the city would make one suppose that at least the wind will stick with one general direction, but noooo… It insists on being as finicky as possible, knocking you about one direction, then the other, then one you didn’t even know wind could come from, till you’re about ready to shut yourself indoors for the next six months.  Make that seven, as April is as fickle as any month could be.  

Of course, Someone was right on time with an application for my blustery bike ride, for my eyes passed over these words just minutes before I left my coffee and cozy chair for the wild winds of Chicago:

Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things.

 (Ecclesiastes 10:5)

I think I too often forget that: the mystery of all God is doing with all He has made.  Especially here in the city, where I see the great accomplishments of man stretching towards the Midwestern sky, I tend to forget the much greater works of the Lord’s hands: the grandeur of the great mountains reaching into the heavens… the seemingly infinite oceans, the horizons of which I can hardly even decipher… even the tiniest blades of grass, which together form miles and miles of green seas… These things are lost to my memory here.  But even here the wind blows – and oh, how it blows! – and even here tiny bones are mysteriously formed in the beautiful round bodies of expectant mothers.  And the wonder of all God is doing with all He has made returns to my mind and intoxicates it… returns to my heart and captivates it with the unfathomable beauty of it all, till I’m completely blown away.