From the Home Place

October 21, 2025

Here we are looking at the tail end of another month, man time sure is going fast! As I told a friend just the other day, “When you get to be our age, we know that we have seen way more sunsets than we will ever see sunrises.” Nothing morbid, just a simple fact.

Yet, as I visit with different folks who read these writings, I’m constantly told that their favorite writings are those about my youth. Well, I would love to write more about that season of my life, but I can’t remember most of it. And what I do remember, I’m not sure if I’ve written of it before or not. After all, I’ve been writing these posts for over twenty years. That’s a lot of stories about one ‘ol fellers’ life!

But, let’s take a run at one more shall we? Yesterday’s writing about the cup in the windmill tower caused me to remember many a day spent turning the wheel on a windmill in an attempt to water cattle.

You see, there four main parts of a windmill: The tower holds everything up in the air so that the wheel – that big shiny round part – can catch the wind. The tail – the long part protruding from the middle of the wheel, is used to turn the wheel into the wind and the gear box – located directly above, and a little behind the wheel is where the gears are that make the pump go up-and-down to pull the water up out of the ground. (You will be able to see each of these parts in the photo at the end of this post.)

And yet, there is one very major part of this whole system that is absolutely essential to make a windmill work – the wind! Without wind the tail cannot turn the wheel into said wind. Without the wind the wheel will not go round-and-round which is needed to turn the gears in the gear box. Without the wind the tail can’t turn the wheel so that the wheel can catch enough wind to turn round-and-round which turns the gears in the gear box, which causes the sucker rod to go up and down which causes friction on the leathers inside the cylinder, which sucks water into the cylinder, pumping water to the surface, so the cows can get a drink! Wow, I guess there are more than four major parts to a windmill!

But back to the wind – when the wind doesn’t blow, the cattle drink the tank dry. And because gasoline driven pump jacks were few and far between back then, I had to crawl up the thirty-foot tall tower and manually turn the wheel for several hours, so the cows could get a drink.

Oh, and by the way, I rode summer pasture for several other ranches and when there was no wind, I had lots of towers to climb! Climbing the tower was the easy part. At the top of the tower there is a very small platform which is possible to stand on, if your courage will allow such a maneuver. Once on the platform (did I mention that it was usually 30 feet in the air?), I would stand on the platform and turn the wheel round-and-round until I could get enough water pumped to water the cattle for today, usually a couple hundred gallons per windmill. Oh yah, there could easily be two or three windmills in each pasture, for each rancher.

I would spend the entire day standing on a platform, using every muscle I possessed to turn a ten-foot wheel so a bunch of momma-cows could get a drink. (And you thought you wanted to be a cowboy.)

As I stood on a twelve-inch board, turning a ten-foot wheel, wishing the wind would blow, the last thing I wanted was for the wind to blow! Because if the wind suddenly blew out of a direction other than the one I had the tail turned to, I would be swept off my perch! Or, if I hung onto the wheel, I could end up going round-and-round until it spit me off, something like a salad shooter!

O.K., I admit there are way too many possible spiritual applications here, so I’m just going to pick one: the wind. Remember that on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), there was a sound “like a mighty rushing wind”? That which could have killed me physically when I was a kid, is now my best friend spiritually. Without the Holy Spirit working in and through our lives, we would be like that windmill without the wind, not much use.

Oh yeah, our human nature would try to physically do what we could do to cause something good to happen, but without the Holy Spirit we would be pretty much as useless as a windmill with wind. Perhaps that is why Jesus told His disciples that He was going to ask His Father to send them a “Helper,” – because Jesus knew without the Spirit, not much good was going to happen. The same is very true for today.

So, every time you read your Bible and feel God leading you to do something – that’s the Holy Spirit blowing. Every time you get to share the Gospel with someone else – that’s the Holy Spirt blowing. Every time you find yourself in awe during a song – that’s the Holy Spirit blowing. Every time you pray, and you know that God has heard you – that the Holy Spirit blowing into your life!

You see my Christ-following friends, without the Holy Spirt at work in our lives, we couldn’t even pump enough fresh water to give the “least of those” a drink of water in His name!

Praising God for His Spirit with you, Neal