The Old Testament of the Bible reminds us on occasion that: “Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother’s womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything.” (Qoheleth 11, 5). The words of Jesus in the New Testament (John 3, 7-15) may be an echo of the same wisdom: “The wind blows where it pleases…. It is like that with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Bible scholars say that in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages, the same word means “spirit,” “breath,” and “wind.” These are simultaneously well known and unknown realities.
Of the four elements – fire, air, earth and water – only earth has fixed shapes; and in the long run even those shapes are not fixed! The world is perpetually changing, and it is hard to “get a fix on it,” as they say. But do we have to get a fix on it before we can live in it? Don’t we live quite successfully with the unfixed and the unknown? So it is with the Spirit of God, who leads us on the path of life to the glory of the heavenly Kingdom.
A prayer for today from Thomas Merton: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.”
