A sailboat of your own?

It makes me think that life is very much like sailing.  Did you ever have a model sailboat?  My father once made me a beautiful wooden boat once, almost a metre long, with big white sails and a heavy lead keel- long before people worried about lead poisoning!. There was a big pond near our house, and all the boys and girls would race down there with their sailboats and power boats on a Saturday morning.  Sometimes, it would be an absolutely wonderful day; the wind would fill the sails, and my boat would go scudding across the pond faster than any of those silly little power boats.   But other days were just horrid; the wind would drop, and my sailboat would sit there, right smack in the middle of the pond, while the other children laughed and went off to the ice-cream stand.

When I was about 18, I started renting a full sized sailboat for my vacation.   And do you know, the same sort of thing still happened to me.  Some days were just wonderful; there was a strong breeze, the deck would tip over, till it almost touched the water, and a white-crested wave would come out  from the back of the boat as we raced along.  But other days were horrid; sometimes, we had to sail amongst the trees, where there was almost no wind, and the boat didn’t move at all.  Sometimes, I would get out a long pole, push it into the mud at the bottom of the river, and then walk along the deck to try and make the boat move.  And those were not very good days.

There is a special day in our church year called Trinity Sunday, the day when we remember the three faces of God- the Creator of our wonderful world, Jesus our teacher and guide, and the Holy Spirit which helps us to live the way Jesus has taught us.  We can't see the Holy Spirit, but it’s very much like our breath, something that gives us life.  Other people have said its just like a strong, powerful wind.  We can’t see the wind.   But we can see its effects- whether we look at the dust swirling on our vegetable patch, or we see a great sailboat scudding over the water.  And it is the same thing with the Holy Spirit.  It is something invisible, but we can see what it does- it fills people with new life, energy and power.  And it gets them moving, in the right direction.  At one time, Jesus’s friend Peter was quite a coward.  When a pretty young servant girl teased him, he pretended that he had never known Jesus.  But then his life became filled with the Holy Spirit, and he changed from being a coward to being a very brave man- in fact, he went on to be crucified like Jesus. And the Holy Spirit can change our lives.  Sometimes we are having an absolutely horrid day, and going absolutely nowhere.  But then we decide to let the Spirit of Jesus into our lives.  We stop worrying about the things that have gone wrong.  We feel filled with a wonderful energy like the wind.  We find a new wisdom.  We become willing and anxious to do the things that Jesus wants us to, and life becomes wonderful and exciting.