The Mighty Wind

The Mighty Wind

The hands of a sculptor shaping clay into a recognizable object is a weak picture of the sculpting of the shoreline of the Golden Coast at the hand of our great Creator. He builds the towering dunes and removes them at will. The breath of His power can destroy and cover the puny work of man’s hands in a single storm. We try to control the wind or make it do our bidding by setting out snow fence or trees for windbreaks. But, it is an unreliable and unpredictable servant, at best.

The shore of the West Coast of Michigan faces the western wind that can hammer it without restraint as it comes across the open water of Lake Michigan. The power of the wind was brought home to me recently when I was on the shore with my two youngest sons, David and Tyler. We were visiting a job site just south of Saugatuck. What seemed to be a moderate wind of thirty miles per hour inland was focused into a howling monster between the dunes and the water. Tyler, the eight-year-old, could barely stand up or move against the wind. So much sand was blowing that our tracks disappeared in fifteen seconds. A three-inch deep trench we dug with our heels was gone within three minutes, completely filled in. This is a small example of the incredible amount of sand that the wind moves on the beach. I have seen places where there are eight to ten foot sand drifts created over the fall and winter months, when most of the movement occurs. The wind has formed dunes in places several miles inland from the present shoreline. It has shaped and sifted the sand so that man can mine it and put it to productive use. It is used in die-casting, sandblasting, sandpaper, and the sand on shingles, to name a few. Some sand is coarse and yellow. Other sand is so white and fine it looks like a mountain of sugar when it is mined. In Ludington there is a series of dunes that follows one after the other so that it looks like huge waves marching along. The wind constantly moves and repositions them. If you figure a cubic yard of sand weighs between two and three thousand pounds a single windstorm can move millions of tons of sand along the shore. In other words, one storm can move more sand than all the sand mines have done in fifty years. That is humbling!

How appropriate, then, for God to use the “sound as of a mighty rushing wind” to picture to us the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The wind that sculpts the sand and moves it into mountains is the picture of the work of the Spirit changing our hearts, sculpting them into something new and pleasing before God. Also, the picture of the wind shows how irresistible the work of the Spirit is. No man can stand against His blast. We must never despair over the lack of repentance of one we love. One almighty blast from the Spirit is sufficient to bring life out of death, and repentance out of rebellion. The mighty wind is a concrete reminder of God’s sovereignty over man’s heart. To add to the picture, the winds with the waves are the tools God uses to make the singing sands of Michigan’s shore. What an awesome God we serve!

Deane Wassink
June, 2001