Jo Acharya | October 26, 2023

My next door neighbour has two pinwheels mounted on his shed roof. When the wind hits them at the right angle they spin round with gusto, reflecting flashes of sunlight from their shiny metallic curls.

Right now there’s a gentle breeze and one is turning while the other remains perfectly still. I watch them from my balcony prayer time as I sit quietly with God.

And it strikes me that these pinwheels don’t have to move themselves. They just have to wait in the right place. Sometimes they are still, and that’s okay. But when the wind catches them, they are brought to life by its energy, not their own.

Sometimes we sit quietly with God, or pray fervently, or beg for guidance, and nothing seems to happen. We can get frustrated. Maybe we need to try harder, we think, or do something different. But no. We are the pinwheel, not the wind. We just need to wait in God’s presence, ready to respond to his moving. It’s his Spirit that brings us to life, and leads us in the way we should go.

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