Filled with the wind of the Spirit
- Jun 8
- 7 min read
Each month on Salvos Online, Rosy, the Territorial Secretary for Spiritual Life Development, shares her thoughts and reflections on the spiritual issues that shape our lives as Christians, exploring how our faith intersects with our everyday experiences and how we can deepen our relationship with God. Today, she focuses on a weekend trip to corps at Maryborough and Bendigo where she experienced a beautiful picture of relationship, service and worship despite and amidst her own personal pain.
My husband and I recently travelled to Maryborough Corps (Vic.) to attend its Red Shield Appeal quiz night, organised by some of the young people from the corps. It was an incredibly well-attended evening that raised a significant amount of money through silent auctions, bargain tables and people offering goods and services.
Tristan, a young person serving in the Family Ministry Assistant role with the corps, had approached local businesses to ask them to support the Red Shield Appeal by donating vouchers and materials, while also helping to coordinate the entire event with the team. It was an incredible night, and I came home with a clock and a whole collection of treasures from the bargain table. What a creative and community-filled way to raise funds!
The Red Shield Appeal has been taking place across the country since the start of May, as employees, volunteers, officers and soldiers come together to invite Australia to support the work of The Salvation Army Australia through financial giving. Across the movement, people continue to find creative ways to raise money, offer services and support their local communities.
There is an enormous amount of time and effort involved. From intersection collections, where people run between cars collecting donations, to scheduling, coordinating sites and building relationships with local schools and communities, so much unseen work goes into the appeal. I want to thank everyone who has taken part and given their time, talents or finances to support The Salvation Army Australia.
Pentecost Sunday at Bendigo
The next morning, we drove to Bendigo, where we spent the day with the corps there. Major Jean Cassidy shared a powerful message on waiting for the Holy Spirit, and I had been invited to lead a prayer activity for Pentecost Sunday.
Pentecost is the moment recorded in Scripture, and remembered in the Christian calendar, where we commemorate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the waiting believers. The gift Jesus promised he would leave with them. He said, “Do not hold onto me …” but promised to send the Advocate.
A couple of days earlier, either out of economy or stubbornness, I had loaded all the week’s groceries into one giant blue IKEA bag because I did not want to make three or four separate trips. I hoisted it onto my shoulder and carried it inside. Somewhere in the process, I must have torn or strained something, because for the next seven days, I was in radiating, excruciating pain. At times, it hurt to breathe. I was grateful I knew it was musculoskeletal and not a heart attack, because honestly, at times, it felt like one.
On Sunday morning, as we prepared to go to Bendigo Corps, I found myself speaking aloud just to encourage myself to keep going. Putting on my uniform was painful. Buttoning it up and putting on my coat hurt.
As I dressed that morning, I worshipped anyway, and from somewhere deep in my spirit came a worship song I loved as a child (mostly because you are allowed to clap loudly while singing it!):
“I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart,I will enter His courts with praise.I will say this is the day that the Lord has made,I will rejoice for He has made me glad.”
Because of whatever was happening with my ribs, it hurt to sing. I had to pause at the line, “He has made me …” and suddenly, in that moment of worship, it struck me afresh: He has made me.
As I prepared to share that morning, God gave me a picture of a sail on a boat. It does not matter whether the sail is beautiful or plain, well-branded or unimpressive. The only thing that matters is whether it yields. Whether it can be filled with the wind. In the same way, we are called to be filled with the wind of the Spirit.
How often do we, in all our economy and industriousness, overload our metaphorical blue IKEA bags because we do not want to make multiple trips? How often do we rush because we do not want to wait? How often do we keep working because waiting feels too wasteful? We row, and we row, instead of unfurling the sail.
Our ability to move towards the horizon is only matched by our willingness to yield our sails to the wind of the Spirit, so we can enter the new waters God is calling us into.
This connected deeply with a prophetic picture I had received a few weeks earlier while meeting with the Spiritual Life Committee, made up of key leaders and representatives from across The Salvation Army Australia. We meet regularly to pray, discern and discuss matters facing our movement, seeking God together and asking for his direction.
I sensed strongly that the rowing we have done in the past, the industrious labour of continuing to do the same things the same way, will hinder us if we keep rowing into the new season and the new waters God is inviting us into. I felt God asking us to unfurl the sails.
At Bendigo Corps, beautifully crafted wooden and metal pieces by local Salvo David Reid and several young people represented key elements of the Bendigo community. One intricately welded piece reflected a well-known local structure. On the left-hand side of the stage sat the holiness table, made from local timber with shopping trolley castors on the bottom.
David later shared the story behind it:
In the late 1990s, the youth ministry wanted the furniture in the Bendigo Salvation Army building to connect with the local community. At that time, I was working in a cabinet-making business, which did not excite me much, so I took on the challenge to work with four young men who did not have a father figure living in their home.
We worked on these projects on Wednesday nights for two years. There was no timeline, which meant it became about the time spent together. Through our conversations, I was able to offer a parent’s perspective on various aspects of life, and I found it incredibly rewarding.
My wife and I have two daughters, so it was meaningful for me to spend time working with young men. Even now, when I occasionally see some of them, they still stop for a chat about the time we shared.
Looking back, God created the opportunity for this program to happen. It became about connection, community and conversation, and the projects themselves were simply a bonus that we still enjoy today. I thank God for that opportunity.
He has made me.
Behind these pieces stood the Salvation Army flag, and this became the illustration I used that morning (while also apologising for touching it)! Although it is not a sacred object, it is held in deep esteem within our movement, representing the blood of Christ in red, the fire of the Holy Spirit in yellow, and the purity and holiness of God in blue.
I held the flag out straight and said that it is something you can only properly read when it is stretched open. And yet if we covered it in starch or superglue to forcibly man-make the words to remain perfectly visible and neat, it would no longer yield or be capable of being filled.
We, too, need to be yielding, like a flag or a sail, so we can be filled with the Spirit and become useful in the direction God is leading. Otherwise, we simply hang limp, unmoving, while continuing to row without ever reading the wind or recognising the seasons around us.
We read from Psalm 124 together three times. Then we read Psalm 126, then again from the final line backwards through to the first!
“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,we were like those who dreamed (the footnote says: or were restored to health!).Our mouths were filled with laughter,our tongues with songs of joy.
Those who sow with tearswill reap with songs of joy.Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow,will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.
Restore our fortunes, Lord,like streams in the Negev.”
That afternoon, a huge number of high school students from the local school came to volunteer for the Red Shield Appeal collection. We served sausages, onions and cake, and thankfully, after an hour or so, my shoulder eased enough for me to help hand food out.
Watching these bright young faces arrive and thanking them with a simple meal before they headed out to collect, thinking of all such similar circumstances and encounters all around The Salvation Army Australia this time of year in Red Shield, I saw such a beautiful picture of relationship, service and worship despite and amidst my own personal pain.
He has made us glad.
It reminded me of a short poem I wrote for Creative Brengle in 2024:
Did you ever think about the double meaning of ‘yield’?
To yield is to surrender. To yield is to bear much fruit.
Maybe in the creation and recreation, the producing and reproducing, we find life in our surrender and therein lies the spiritual bloom.
I also thought of Elijah when God spoke to him:
“The Lord said to Elijah, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord …”
Elijah, too, had to yield, to surrender, so the presence of God could pass by him.
A haiku:
Yield so you may pass Fruitful fields yield harvest grass Surrender bears life
