The Spirit Doesn't Have To

The Spirit Doesn't Have To--June 18, 2019

"O Lord, how manifold are your works!

 In wisdom you have made them all; 

    the earth is full of your creatures.

 Yonder is the sea, great and wide, 

    creeping things innumerable are there,

    living things both small and great.

 There go the ships,

    and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

 These all look to you 

    to give them their food in due season;

 when you give to them, they gather it up;

    when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.

 When you hid your face, they are dismayed;

    when you take away their breath, they die

    and return to their dust.

 When you sent forth your spirit, they are created;

    and you renew the face of the ground." [Psalm 104:24-30]

The thing about the wind is you can't quite contain it, pin it down, or predict it.  

Try to catch the wind with a net, and it blows right through.  Try to hold it in a box, and as soon as it stops moving, it stops being "wind" and becomes just "air."

The wind defies predictability, and it definitely cannot be put on a leash.

Same with breath, too, really--go ahead and try to hold yours for very long, and you'll see that even your body just can't contain it.

I think the same is true of the Spirit of God.  That's why the poets and prophets and apostles keep coming back to the imagery of breath and of wind to describe the Spirit.  How does Jesus say it to Nicodemus?  "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."  It is an image of the Spirit's total freedom and complete autonomy from our control, and it is a reminder that God is utterly unrestrained.  God doesn't need our permission before doing things; God doesn't have to seek our approval; and God definitely doesn't need our power or authority to accomplish divine purposes.  After all, as the psalmist says in the verses above, God even made the giant sea monsters (with ominous names like Leviathan) just for the sport of it--because God could, without needing a committee of humans to endorse the plan.

The Spirit of God--being God after all--is not dependent on human power or validation: it's the other way around.  We--and every other living thing on God's green earth--are dependent upon the Spirit for our lives, for our breath, and for our existence.  We need God to keep sustaining our life at each and every moment, giving us the next breath, and the next, and the next.  God's Spirit, by contrast, like the wind does not need to get our okay before moving in some new direction.

And yet--here's the thing that floors me: when the ancient poet looked out over the world, he saw that the Spirit of God keeps showing up with us to give us life.  The Spirit doesn't "have to" in the sense that some middle-level office manager will come, coffee mug in hand, over to the Spirit's cubicle and warn, "You were late to work this morning; I'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in over the weekend for extra productivity."  There is no one who supervises the Spirit to make sure the numbers look good for the third-quarter earnings report.  And yet, the Spirit chooses to be found, consistently and faithfully, giving us life.  The Spirit chooses to be found, over and over again, providing enough to eat for all things, breathing life into us, and renewing all creation... now, and now, and now.

Not because the Spirit "has to" like an employee being told by a boss what to do and where to go, but because the Spirit of God is committed to bringing life, feeding our hungry bellies, and sustaining our breath--by the Spirit's own choice.  Like the friend who consistently shows up for you when you need them, not because there are legal requirements or job-related penalties of they don't, but because they have promised to be your friend, the Spirit is faithful to keep showing up to attend to our needs, day by day by day, simply because that is who the Spirit is.

God makes sea monsters just for the fun of it, and the existence of wild and awesome creatures reminds us that we do not get to supervise God or evaluate God's creations based on how useful or practical we think they are.  God is allowed to do whatever-the-heaven God chooses.  Always.  And yet, the poet says, God's Spirit chooses to be faithful, showing up to feed hungry mouths and to breathe life into our lungs.  The Spirit doesn't have to... but chooses to... always.

That is enough to give us pause for today, maybe so that we may say, "thank you."

Thank you, God.  Thank you, Spirit of Life.  Thank you, You who perfectly love us in perfect freedom.  Thank you.