Wind-Graspers, Chasers and Catchers

During my career in international development, my colleagues and I had a ubiquitous concern for measurable and sustainable results. This was undergirded by a strong sense of accountability to the Congress (per legislative requirements), and through Congress to the American public. We were highly skilled in designing, implementing and evaluating elaborate projects and programs to tackle intractable development issues across our world. Our programs/projects constructed extensive and expensive supply networks of:

·      Policy frameworks and institutions

·      Technical savoir faire

·      Management/financial systems

·      Education/training

·      Budgetary and commodity support

·      Collaborations with other donor projects and programs

·      Complex monitoring and evaluation systems

·      Extensive reporting protocols

The designs of these various program aspects were carefully integrated, collaboratively developed with host nationals and other donor agencies, and supported by comprehensive, long-term strategies and, of course, the latest-greatest logic models available.

In spite of such elaborate supply networks; typically, the highest level of potentially sustainable results was as elusive as our quest was ubiquitous! Often unanticipated factors easily prevented, reduced or wiped out gains (e.g., cultural shifts, wars, politics, corruption, diseases, poor designs, weak implementation, leadership changes, etc.).

This is reflective of life across our world, with concerns about:

·      'Where the rubber meets the road’

·      ‘The last link in the chain’

·      ‘The arc that sparks’

·      The challenging ‘So what?!’ question

·      The pivotal, last connection linkage

·      The clear purpose and meaning of life

Irrespective of our best efforts, that last, critical connection is either not achieved at all, or as well and sustainably as anticipated. King Solomon wrestled with this ‘supply network - last connection - so what’ conundrum, and concluded:

All our toil under the sun is circuitous vanity – 

grasping for the wind!

(Ecclesiastes)

I used to discount Solomon’s (paraphrased) expression as being based on the carnally minded thinking of a king who was apparently not walking with God during the latter part of his life as he had done as a young king. Upon reflection, I conclude he is spot on! Here’s why.

God commissioned us to ‘subdue the earth’, and He also instructed us to, ‘Trust Me!’ He gifts us with skills to construct and connect elaborate supply networks to address problems and create opportunities across our world, much like you and I do in our careers. We have done a pretty good job thus far. Yet, if we could perfectly make and sustain that last, pivotal connection every time, we would have no need to trust or even believe in God. I doubt His commission meant for us to engineer Him out of our lives. Given our inherent proclivities to be our own gods, we naturally resist His instruction to ‘Trust Me’. So we plod on, grasping for the wind, as Solomon so aptly put it.

Undoubtedly, we are wind-graspers! How and why? In essence, we are wind….spirit, unlimited and insatiable, made in the very image (spiritual, soulish and physical) of our unlimited and eternal God. He, too, is wind, and has fashioned us so that only His wind – His Spirit, will satisfy us at the deepest, most intimate and imaginable level. Though shaped to grasp Him/His wind, we have rather designed life to grasp for physical things, i.e., vanities that can only satisfy at the surface-level. This is what Solomon did -- the richest man in the known world of his day. His conclusion echoes loudly in practically everything in our world today – vanity, all is vanity, chasing after the wind!’

           

King David apparently discovered the answer to the conundrum his son, Solomon, wrestled with. David wrote:

As the deer pants for the water brooks,
so pants my soul for You, O God.
Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls. 
(Psalm 42:1, 7)

From deep within his spirit, David learned to perceive and draw from the depths of God’s spiritual treasures. In response, God blessed him materially and meaningfully because David had his priorities right about Whom he was chasing. Without this perception and drawing, Solomon, who was wealthier than his father, ended up chasing material things in the most un-meaningful manner. As a result, he struggled to make that final, pivotal and sustainable connection to meaningfulness in life.

Yes, by divine design, we are wind-graspers and wind-catchers! The key question is:

After which or Whose wind are you grasping to satisfy deeply

…the wind that you, in essence, are?