Today is a windy day.

When my cat was still on Earth in her earthly body (she’s in Heaven now, in her heavenly body), she was terrified of windy days – not because of the wind itself (I don’t think she knew what wind was at that time), but because of the way the bushes and trees would flail and lash at her and the leaves would chase her around the yard. I think she thought they were moving on their own volition and were on the attack.

So she refused to go outside on windy days.

Smart cat.  ;D

Plants do move on their own volition (very very slowly), but that’s not what makes them flail and lash on occasion, nor is it what makes dead leaves blow around. The invisible wind does that.

When I was an atheist, I believed the forces that governed my life were external to me and beyond my control. I believed bad things happened to me not because of anything I did, but because systems were bad or people were bad. And so, to my mind, economic and political trees flailed and lashed at me, and people chased me around like leaves. I was as blind to the spiritual forces working in my life as my cat was to the wind blowing through the yard. But at least my cat had the excuse of not knowing science and the good sense to stay indoors on windy days; I had no excuse but spiritual blindness and the bad sense to constantly throw myself into the spiritual maelstrom. Being completely clueless as to why things were the way they were, I grew more and more confused and desperate every day.

You’re not born with spiritual blindness; you acquire it through sin and pride. Most of the world labors under some degree of spiritual blindness. In fact, metaphorically speaking, most of the world believes that dead leaves are attacking them, and trees and bushes are out to get them. Not knowing how God’s Holy Spirit and all the other holy and unholy spirits work in their lives, they attribute their misery and “bad luck” to influences like political systems or absent parents. Very few understand that the measure you mete out is the measure you get in return, mitigated by God’s mercy. Very few acknowledge that the Ten Commandments have been written on their hearts by God himself, and are as much a part of them as their DNA.

For the first 36 years of my life, I was like most people in the world, believing that trees and leaves were out to get me. Even worse, I always blamed my problems and failures on someone or something else. I never made the connection between my ungodly life choices and the misery that followed. God’s Ten Commandments were written on my heart just as deeply as they were on everyone else’s, but my spiritual blindness made me spiritually illiterate.

Atheism is a form of acquired spiritual illiteracy.

The only cure for spiritual blindness is, of course, Jesus Christ. You cannot come to God any other way but by Jesus. Like my cat taking shelter indoors on windy days, you can take shelter under the mighty hand of God as a follower of Jesus. And then you’ll be able to see. The spiritual winds will still blow and the elements will still lash at you, but at least you’ll know why: you’ll make the connection between the choices you make in life and the kind of life you get in return. From this knowledge, you can then learn to make better choices. You don’t need to see the wind to know it’s there, any more than you need to see God’s Law to know it’s there, because you can clearly see the impacts of both.

By the way, my cat in Heaven now knows what wind is. In fact, she knows a lot more about most things than I do. All of God’s creatures in Heaven are given a full measure of God’s Spirit. Someday, they’ll be teaching us the miraculous “science” of the heavenly realms, if and when we make it home.