One of the more interesting things I learned from getting a drone pilot's license was having to know how actual aircraft work. To pass the exam to achieve a commercial license to operate an small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), you had to learn about much that normal pilots of manned aircraft have to know. Details such as weather patterns, navigation, and airspace regulations (particularly important) were among the required knowledge, but so was something seemingly less applicable to small droves: airspeed.
Fixed-wing aircraft achieve flight because air passes over and under their wings at such a speed to produce lift. The airspeed is the speed with which the air is flowing over and under the wings and doesn't correspond directly to ground speed. An aircraft with a headwind might have an airspeed that is significantly greater than how fast they are traveling from point A to point B. For this reason, a strong tailwind can undermine the aircraft's ability to even stay in the air. A phenomenon known as "wind sheer" can abruptly reduce the aircraft's airspeed, causing it to stall and fall out of the sky. Airspeed, not ground speed, is what enables the aircraft to take off from the ground and stay in the air once it's up.
Without airspeed, the aircraft is not an aircraft at all. It's instead (at best) a rather awkward and inefficient vehicle for driving (taxiing) from one end of the airport to another, or (at worst) a harmful object falling out of the sky. It's certainly not able to operate as designed: as an aircraft.
Such is the case for the Christian, who can be likened to an aircraft. The Christian has a design, a purpose, and function in the world, and requires the enablement of "wind" in order to achieve that function. Now many sermons have been given before about the "wind" that blew through the room where the Apostle's were gathered together in Acts 2:2. These are often a bit awkward since the texts says "Suddenly a sound like a violent wind blowing came from heaven and filled the entire house where they were sitting" (NET). Nevertheless, while Acts 2 emphasizes the "sound" of a mighty wind, rather than the wind itself, other passages associate the Spirit of God with a "wind" that passes over the primordial Creation (Gen 1:2), or that is "breathed out" by Christ onto his disciples (John 20:22). Such is the association of the Spirit of God with "breath" and "wind" that we categorize our study of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit as "Pneumatology." (pneuma = Greek for "breath" or "spirit").
So the analogy of wind to describe the movement of the Spirit of God is not only reasonable, but frequent in the Scriptures. For this reason, this last Sunday as we sang Hymn #369 for the Pentecost, it occurred to me that Isaac Watts was describing the operation of an aircraft. Without the airspeed provided by the Divine "wind," the aircraft (worshipper/Christian) doesn't get off the ground at all. The two center verses describe with glaring theological accuracy the complete inability to worship as we ought to, function as we must, or accomplish anything for which we are designed without the enablement of the Holy Spirit. Such is our dependency on His "airspeed" passing over our wings.
I once had a young man tell me, "It's hard to be a Christian," to which I corrected him, "Well, the further you get, you realize it's actually impossible. We're totally reliant on the enabling of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the most basic parts of our design." I may have sounded insightful at the time, but such truths can be easily forgotten, and I, myself, need reminders like Hymn #369 to put things back into perspective; especially on days such as Pentecost, when we remember that Christ did not leave us comfortless, but instead sent to us a Helper, an Advocate, and Comforter to provide the "airspeed" needed to fly as we must in His service.
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