Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” (John 3:5-8)I was listening to someone trying to explain the nature and trinity of God the other day. It was a silly attempt. The nature of God is so far above us that we cannot fully explain who he is. We just accept who he is. When we try to pin him down and get him on paper, we reduce him to the explicable. It is impossible to explain God. You can only go so far before you come up against a wall.
The same with the Holy Spirit. He is, after all, God, and again is inexplicable.
Nicodemus, the man to whom Jesus is speaking, asks Jesus for an explanation of how the Spirit works. Jesus said he couldn’t give him one. The Holy Spirit, he says, is like the wind. You know it is there and you can feel it, but you cannot explain it.
I have met people who said that if you can’t explain it, then they would have nothing to do with it. But as Jesus said, you really cannot explain the wind, either. I worked for the phone company in the early 70’s but I never heard a good explanation as to why phones work, yet I used them. I do not understand electricity even though my father worked all his life for the light company. But I still use it. I have found no one who understands how computers work, but I have three. Five, if you count the phones.
There are lots of things I do not understand that make up an integral part of my life. Yet I use them and accept them. and I know that all these things are man-made. Someone somewhere understands them. but no one truly understands God.
And again, as I have said before, a God that you can understand and graph on a sheet of paper is not a real God.
I know he can make me new, I know he can change my heart, I know he can guide me and keep me safe. I know these things. And these things are enough.
I accept him even though I cannot understand him. And I praise him.
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