Wind

The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with the Spirit.

I keep trying to systematize what is essentially wild — to schedule the holy, manage the movement of God, put the wind in a box with a lid and a label.

But the Spirit refuses my categories. He shows up in the unexpected conversation, the ordinary moment made luminous, the Scripture verse I have read a hundred times that lands differently on the hundred and first.

I am learning to hold my plans loosely enough that there is room in them for wind.

To leave margins in the day, space in the schedule, whiteness in the margins of my life where something can happen that I did not arrange.

Come, wind. Blow where You wish. I will try to have enough open windows.