When the Wind Changed at Leiden

In the autumn of 1574, the citizens of Leiden in the Netherlands had been under Spanish siege for months. Protestant believers huddled in a city where every scrap of food had been consumed — leather boots boiled into broth, weeds stripped from between cobblestones. Spanish troops encircling the walls called out that surrender was inevitable. The people of Leiden knew the bread of tears.

Their prince, William of Orange, devised a desperate plan: breach the dikes and flood the lowlands so a fleet of ships could sail across the fields to the city. But even after the dikes were cut, the waters refused to rise. For weeks the wind blew the wrong direction, holding back the sea. The people prayed. They wept. They begged God to turn His face toward them.

Then on the night of October 2, the wind shifted. The waters surged inland, carrying flat-bottomed boats loaded with herring and white bread. By morning the Spanish had fled, and the starving citizens stumbled through their gates to find food waiting on the floodwaters.

Psalm 80 is the prayer Leiden prayed — the cry of a people fed with tears, mocked by enemies, pleading with the Shepherd of Israel: "Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved." Sometimes restoration comes like a change in the wind — not on our schedule, but exactly when the Almighty turns His face toward His people.