Disturbance

Monday in the Fourth Week of Lent

Yours are the heavens; the earth also is yours;

you laid the foundations of the world

and all that is in it.

Psalm 89:11

I wake in the dark hearing the voracious wind. And I wonder. What makes the sound? The wind itself? Tree branches furiously scraping against one another as the air forces its way past? Other bodies that are disturbed?

The Holy Spirit too can arrive with ferocity. And does it have a sound? Or is its presence announced by those it moves in its passing, voices lifted in prayer, in lament, in grievance and in praise.

In the middle of the night, in the middle of Lent, the world outside pummeled by the wind, I wonder what the Spirit has in store for me. All of creation belongs to God and I am within it and small. And I am of it also.