Wind, Wi-Fi,
and the
Next Breath

I met a young man today. A college student. He has been helping me with some work on a website — a platform I am building, something I am hoping will bring in money one day.

On paper, the two of us never should have crossed paths. Different ages. Different worlds. Different circles entirely. He is a kid I would have never met in a hundred ordinary days.

But God crosses paths. He does it constantly, and most of the time we are too busy running our own errands to notice it happened.

We got to talking, and I said something to him that I have not been able to put down since.

You already believe in things you can't see

I told him: you cannot see electricity. You cannot see Wi-Fi. You cannot see the wind.

But you do not argue with any of them. You flip a switch and expect the room to light up. You pull up a page on your phone and expect it to load. You watch the tree line bend and you know something moved through it. Nobody stands in a storm demanding to see the wind before they will believe in it.

We put faith in invisible things every hour of every day. We just do not call it faith when it is convenient.

Then I thought about my breath

Here is where it turned on me.

I started thinking about what I am actually doing with my breath. The hours. The striving. The things I am trying to accumulate, trying to stack up, trying to get into the barn before winter.

Jesus told a story about a man like me. Luke chapter 12. The man had a good year — crops came in heavy, more than he had room for. So he tore down his barns and built bigger ones, and he told himself he had plenty laid up for many years, and it was time to take his ease.

I have got barns. Mine do not have hay in them. Mine look like websites and book sales and plans and numbers on a screen. But they are barns, and I have been tearing them down and building them bigger for years.

My next breath isn't promised

That is the part that stopped me cold.

I am not guaranteed the next one. And on the last one, not a single thing I have stacked up goes with me. Not a dollar. Not a title. Not a barn.

Some other man is going to sit on my throne. Some other man is going to spend my jewels.

Some other man is going to sit on my throne.

Solomon got there three thousand years ahead of me. In Ecclesiastes 2 he says he came to hate all the labor he had poured himself into under the sun — because he had to leave every bit of it to the man coming after him, and he had no way of knowing whether that man would be wise or a fool.

You work your whole life for a pile, and then you hand the pile to somebody who may just burn it.

We've got it backwards

So here is the strange thing I walked away with.

The things I can see — the barn, the throne, the jewels, the numbers — those are the things that vanish. Every one of them. Guaranteed.

The things I cannot see — God, my soul, eternity, the battle being fought over my shoulder while I am busy checking sales reports — those are the things that last forever.

We build our whole lives around what is visible and temporary, and we treat what is invisible and eternal like a rumor. Meanwhile we have got no problem believing in Wi-Fi.

That is not a small mistake. That is the whole game.

Hold it loose

I am not telling you to quit your job or stop building. Scripture does not call the rich man a fool for having a good harvest. It calls him a fool for thinking the harvest was the point, and for talking to his own soul like he owned it.

So build the thing. Work hard. Provide for your family. Just hold it loose, and know what it is.

That young man has no idea he preached a sermon to me today. He was just there to help me with a website.

But God crosses paths.

What are you building right now that you cannot take with you? Sit with that one for a minute.