“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
John 3:8
Wind storms such as hurricanes and tornadoes have exacted billions of dollars of damage and inflicted multitudes of casualties throughout history. A derecho is a wind storm that moves straight ahead and can blow across hundreds of miles in just hours. The derecho in Southern Ontario on May 21, 2022 that lefts thousands without power, packed wind gusts of 118 miles per hours. For comparison, the highest non-tornado wind-speed ever recorded by man was 253 miles per hour.
Today is Pentecost on the Christian calendar, the day we remember the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus likens the Holy Spirit to the wind in the sense that it’s movements are unpredictable and powerful. The Holy Spirit is still at work today, bringing new life to hearts once dead in sin, even in the most unlikely of places.
Rosario Butterfield was a leftist, lesbian professor who despised Christians. As a professor of English and women’s studies, on track to becoming a tenured radical, she was fervent for the worldviews of Freud, Hegel, Marx, and Darwin. In 1997 she wrote an article in a local newspaper mocking Jesus and condemning Promise Keepers. This article generated so many responses that Rosario kept one folder for fan mail and one for hate mail. One letter, however, fit neither category. It was from a Pastor in Syracuse, N.Y. who invited Rosario to dinner. After many discussions, an unlikely friendship, and the powerful working of the Holy Spirit in her heart, Rosario surrendered to Christ. These are her words: “I did not want to lose everything that I loved. But the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank, tentatively at first, then passionately, of the solace of the Holy Spirit.”
The life-giving power of the Holy Spirit through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, is the greatest force this world has ever experienced. And by that power, Jesus Christ continues to build His church! May we be found faithful in our witness of Him!