The Breeze

The warm sun embraces your face, light breeze blowing through your hair, scents of dirt and nature combine with the aroma of coffee in your nose, the sound of birds chirping, cars racing and a creek flowing in the distance are all captured by your senses as you step foot out the door in the morning. You’ve made so many decisions in just a few hours to make it to this point, and to be outside, but what next? Where do you go? Sometimes there’s an agenda on the docket for the day, other times there’s not, so how do you decide where to go? Maybe you don’t, maybe it’s just simply moving your feet in one direction and seeing what catches your eye. 

The stores down the street are like every other day. Maybe you have a hankering to get coffee before meandering along, so you go in and have a pleasant, brief conversation with the barista. You continue to walk along, coffee in hand as you pass store after store. There’s nothing different about them, but for some reason one just catches your eye today. You make the decision to go in, and as you wander the shop the owner strikes up a casual conversation, asking if he could help in anyway. You politely decline by saying you’re just looking but will let him know if you need anything. You keep walking around for a bit longer before leaving. Continuing to walk down the street, glancing at things along the way, you notice some people sitting on a bench admiring the river. You pull yourself over and watch the river move over the rocks and dance through weeds before continuing on your way. 

Not making it much further down the road you see a guy who matches a description that God placed in your heart and mind just a few hours earlier. The decision is yours to make. Do you go up and start a conversation, or do you just keep walking? The pull of your heart tells you to engage in conversation. You decide to listen and timidly start talking to him, not sure how he’s going to respond. To your pleasant surprise he is completely invested in the conversation and even asks you questions as well. At the end of discussion you ask if you could pray for him and he excitedly agrees. So you ask for prayer requests and pray for him and his needs, then you continue on with your day.

You day continues and you end up back at home, having seemingly accomplished nothing. But that’s a total lie. You’ve accomplished a lot, you say many people today and even talked to some of them. You going into the coffee shop might have been God directing you in there because the barista needed a smile and a pleasant conversation after the many rude ones before you. The store owner might have seen the love of Christ in you from the way you interacted with him. God might have been gently guiding you toward the river for a reason; maybe to have a conversation with the people or maybe someone prayed that a person matching your description was standing there was they drove by, so now they know God is real. The man you prayed for was clearly God directing that conversation and interaction. But see had all those other events not happened, you may have never seen that man God specifically placed on your heart. 

Like the light breeze you noticed as you stepped out the door this morning, God is gently directing your steps. Sometimes we notice Him and other times we don’t. It might be a very strong wind, like the man you prayed for, or it might be really gently to where you hardly notice it, like the barista. Either way God is directing you, so it’s your choice how you look at situations. You can see them from Gods perspective or you could see them from your own. So I ask you these questions: will you listen to the breeze that’s directing you? Will you make the most of every situation and be Christ to all people? How have you seen God move this week?