Thursday 

Five Signs of God

We tend to get a lot more wind than sun in Glasgow, so that's a familiar aspect of the weather. I'm not sure many people see the positive side of it however.

Hold your breath for a while and you quickly remember just how much we need the air in which we live. The winds are one of the Signs of God mentioned in the Qur'an, which talks of them turning on the face of the earth long before todays weathermen learned the patterns of their swirling isobars.

The plants in our gardens also breathe the air around us, and the winds play their part in the elegant network of life upon the earth. For the winds carry fertilising pollen from one flower to another, and then, when the plant casts its seeds upon the breeze, the winds carry them far away to spread the plants offspring on new ground.

How subtle are the scents we can detect, carried to us on the air, and one of the Names that muslims use for God is the All-subtle. But the wind has a power that fills the sails of windmills on earth and ships at sea, a power that can also be seen as a tornado or hurricane. A lifegiving sign, yet giving an indication of the majestic power of God that surrounds us.