Is It the Wind That Moves the Trees?

The whole concept of Downshoredrift is that God is always working - He is always initiating. We are not the initiators, but rather, we are to respond to the Divine Initiative. God is always working, always redeeming, always restoring, always saving and reconciling the world to Himself through Christ. In understanding this, we must realize that we are to follow Jesus (which implies that Jesus is moving through history) and not try to get Him to follow us. We are characters in God's story - He is not a character in our story. Believing this fundamental truth caused me to be in Port-au-Prince, Haiti last week and always leads is to unexpected places.
Eugene Peterson has a great perspective on this in his book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places:
"G.K. Chesterton once said that there are two kinds of people in the world: when trees are waving wildly in the wind, one group of people thinks that it is the wind that moves the trees; the other group thinks that the motion of the trees creates the wind. The former view was the one held by most of humankind through most of its centuries; it was only in recent years, Chesterton said, that a new breed of people had emerged who blandly hold that it is the movement of trees that creates the wind. The consensus had always held that the invisible is behind and gives energy to the visible; Chesterton in his work as a journalist, closely observing and commenting on people and events, reported with alarm that the broad consensus had fallen apart and that the modern majority naively assumes that what they see and hear and touch is basic reality and generates whatever people come up with that cannot be verified with the senses. They think that the visible accounts for the invisible."
Are we man-centered or God-centered? Am I self-centered or Christ-centered? I confess that I am often the former. As I grow in maturity, my prayer is that I be conformed to the image of Christ, that I realize that it is the wind that moved the trees, not the other way around. God is always working. Faith gives is eyes to see that, and in seeing, we rejoice.

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