 
WINDS
WE LIVE at the bottom of an ocean. Some
of us have visited the Marineland Studios in Florida and
stood at the glass sides of the great aquariums and watched
the procession of life inside. The medium in which the
various aquatic creatures pass is transparent—to a degree;
it supports their movement; it provides them life-giving
chemicals. Not only do sea animals propel themselves through
this medium, but many animals move upon the ground beneath
it. The water becomes to them an atmosphere.
So we live at the bottom of an ocean. It
is transparent to a greater degree than the sea; yet the air
may become so filled with vapors or chemicals in suspension
as to become practically opaque. It supports the movements
of creatures and contrivances that fly. It presses upon the
bodies of the living beings that crawl upon its bottom with
a weight we endure only when evenly distributed. Like the
water, the air will distort the passage of light rays so as
to magnify or alter the appearance of objects seen at an
angle.
Like the liquid ocean, the gaseous ocean
is in motion. Were it not so, life would cease through
concentration of poisons—the air would become a dead sea.
"All the rivers run into the sea," wrote an ancient
scientist, "yet the sea is not full." Why? Because of a
circuit of motion: "Unto the place whence the rivers come,
thither they return again." Ecclesiastes 1:7. In that
circuit the water becomes purified; in the distillation by
the sun's heat the liquid drops its load of impurities and
becomes pure vapor, to condense into the purest form of
water, the rain.
So the air performs its circuits. "The
wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the
north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth
again according to his circuits." Ecclesiastes 1:6. Into the
ocean of air run all the rivers of air from two billion
human lungs, from countless myriads of lungs of lower
creatures, from the leaves of every plant on earth, from the
very pores of the globe itself in the aeration of the soil.
Yet the sea of air is not full, because "it whirleth about
continually."
Try to imagine what would happen on earth
if all winds stopped blowing everywhere for even a few
moments. If we use "winds" in the widest sense of air
currents of any degree of speed, it is the constant flowing
of the air that ventilates the whole world.
As the messengers of the Creator, they go
on merciful errands. Even though, since man sold out his
kingdom to the usurper Satan, winds often serve the prince
of the power of the air, yet they still obey the higher
Sovereign; and to the child of God it is the Majesty of
heaven who rides upon the wings of the wind.
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