Scripture refers to a dynamic wind that is ever-present and permanent for the believer. The word “spirit” in both Hebrew and Greek means “wind” or “breath.” Both breeze and breath are appropriate images of the Holy Spirit. That wind or breath of air, first revealed in the creation (Genesis 2:7), arrived again in history on the Day of Pentecost.

It’s interesting how memories are aroused and brought to the fore. I was working a crossword puzzle online, and 9-down called for the name of a cold, dry European wind. Immediately, I typed in “MISTRAL.” How did I know the answer? I lived in France for five years—two in Montpellier and three in Marseille. In Marseille, Le Mistral blew in and often swept through the city. The French also called it le balai (the broom) as it blew down from the North to sweep the streets clean with its forceful winds.
Another wind blew northward from Africa’s Sahara, sweeping across the Mediterranean into and across France. Its name is Le Sirocco. This wind is known for its dry, hot, violent wind. When it blows, it sucks up Saharan sand and deposits it across the north African coast and into southern Europe. I first became acquainted with it when living in Tunisia, and also experienced its powerful effects in France. The African desert sand would blow across the Mediterranean Sea and reach France covering cars, buildings, and streets. Two fierce winds with names known to millions.
We name our intense winds, too, don’t we? El Nino and Nor’easter winds qualify. However, I confess that it’s Le Mistral and Le Sirocco that arouse more memories for me, especially memories of riding my moped on both continents in my younger and more daring years of my life. Besides the sights and experiences that they recall, they remind me of winds that buffet our lives—sometimes for good as refreshing and sometimes for ill as trials to contend with.
We can all remember the winds in our lives that rocked our world, battered self-esteem, or pummeled us into the reality that we aren’t as self-sufficient as we thought. They might have been harsh winds representing want or need. Perhaps our self-reliance faltered, an important relationship was broken, the loss of a loved one occurred, faith in the existence God was challenged, the loss of status in life, or dire health conditions. We can all agree that we have experienced strong and harsh winds in our journey through this life.
Nonetheless, such winds that came from either direction may have also brought refreshment, a breath of fresh, cool, soothing air in a very tense, hot period of our lives. Perhaps a friend or soul mate blew into our lives at just the right time, or God provided incredible, necessary help in a time of need, or we rose out of a spiritually dry period to experience renewed joy and hope, or someone spoke a word of encouragement when we couldn’t see light through our depressed, hopeless, clouded vision.
Such dynamic winds blow in and out and across our lives with mixed effects. One deposits something unwanted, like sand causing various problems. Another wind acts like a broom sweeping our lives clean of worry and concern, bringing refreshing clean, cool air. If an artist were to attempt to paint an image of these winds, one representation might be of one exhaling a strong breath across the earth. Le Mistral and Le Sirocco come and go. I’m happy to have experienced them both.
Scripture refers to a dynamic wind that is ever-present and permanent for the believer. The word “spirit” in both Hebrew and Greek means “wind” or “breath.” Both breeze and breath are appropriate images of the Holy Spirit. That wind or breath of air, first revealed in the creation (Genesis 2:7), arrived again in history on the Day of Pentecost. “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. . . All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit . . .” (Acts 2: 1-4). When Jesus spoke to Nicodemus on the need to be born again, he said, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” He explained to Nicodemus that the “wind blows wherever it pleases . . . you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3: 6).
But there is more. Christians are filled with a wind, a breath of air—the Holy Spirit—at their spiritual birth! This is a wind that will blow only good in our lives, that is, good as God intends for our welfare, His purposes, and His glory. It may be a broom (le balai) at times bringing cleansing from sin into our lives. It may be the force behind worshiping God in Spirit and in truth, or of deeds of compassion and mercy to others. At other times it will be that breath of fresh air that encourages us to be steadfast in faith as we complete our life’s journey. It surpasses Le Mistral and Le Sirocco in impact—both temporal and eternal, and I am thankful to God for making it known to me.
Thanks to a crossword puzzle for prompting these thoughts.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
The slavery of colonial and antebellum America was tragic but there is nothing we can do to change that history. The present is a different matter. That is our responsibility. No amount of indignant finger-pointing at the world of three hundred years ago will cleanse us of our present-day complicity.

Winston Churchill famously quipped that history would be kind to him, for he intended to write it. That line came to mind last week when I saw a tweet about America’s slave-owning past. It pointed out the rather obvious fact that Jonathan Edwards was only able to study as long and hard each day as he did because he had slaves to do the drudge work necessary for the material maintenance of his household. Whether this comment was intended to prove that Edwards’s theology was fundamentally unsound, or to demonstrate that Edwards (like me and, presumably, the author of the tweet) was morally flawed, or merely to point out that Edwards lived in the eighteenth century rather than the twenty-first was unclear.
The transatlantic slave trade was an evil. And it did enable men like Edwards to enjoy the leisure from physical work that then allowed them to study. But it was—and is—not the only evil that enables one class of people to enjoy life at the expense of another. Early critical theorist Walter Benjamin, using the idea of the spoils of war to reflect upon history, memorably commented:
[Cultural treasures] owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Benjamin’s point is simple: The things we admire in culture are often built on the back of exploitation. And one does not need to be a Marxist to see that there is much truth in this claim.
Take, for example, companies currently involved with China—companies whose products we all use and that make our hi-tech lives, including those of the tweeting class, possible. In 2020 the Australian Strategic Policy Institute produced a report on the forced labor of Uighurs under the Chinese government and identified 82 companies that potentially benefit, directly or indirectly, from this. That list included Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung. Apple was among the companies that did not respond to the report. Last year, the New York Times reported on the efforts of American companies, including Apple and Nike, to weaken the Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would ban imported goods made with forced labor from the Xinjiang region of China. In May of this year, Business Insider reported that seven Apple suppliers had links to forced labor programs in China, including those that abused Uighur Muslims. In short, if you walk to work in Nike trainers or use a smartphone or computer, you can probably only do so because somebody in China has been enslaved and exploited. And that is before any consideration of how buying Chinese products in general supports a nation engaged in genocide and racially profiled forced sterilization, all enabled via a system of government concentration camps.
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Working through the civil authorities, Satan has launched waves of persecution against the church from ancient times through the Reformation, the Great Awakening, times of revivals, and all during the twentieth century, in which more Christians died for their faith than in all previous centuries combined.

The church’s battle with Satan did not end with the writing of the book of Revelation. Satan continued to work both within the church and from without. He sowed seeds of corruption, heresy, strife, and schism in the visible church. He instigated waves of persecution against the visible church across the centuries.
Satan presided over the rise of prelacy, as the clergy sought to enlarge its powers and domains as bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, and popes. He fostered the growth of superstition regarding the sacraments, including baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, and the substitution of the Mass in the place of the Lord’s Supper. He encouraged the introduction of pagan practices into Christian worship, such as the use of the vestments of the pagan Roman priesthood and the worship of pictures, crucifixes, statues, and relics of the saints. Satan inspired many to embrace false teaching about the Trinity, the natures and person of Christ, and the canon of Holy Scripture, not to mention false ideas about the life to come, such as purgatory and limbo. The corruption of the visible church and the rise of the false church were the work of Satan.
As the once-flourishing churches of the Middle East and North Africa became increasingly corrupt and weak, Satan launched a counterattack, inspiring the visions and sayings of a false prophet and rousing the tribes of Arabia to follow him as an army in a campaign to plant the religion of Islam across the map of the ancient world by force. The Christian church was crushed to the ground in many places. After a long period of slumber, Islam today has been roused again by Satan to spread its darkness into new lands and to foster a new reign of terror throughout the world.
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