Changing Winds

"Look at the wind!" exclaimed Clover as she stood at the window. "The trees are swaying back and forth, and some of the branches are breaking off.""Wow! It's really blowing hard!" said Beau as he came into the room. "I've never seen so much wind!"Dad joined them at the window. "You can't really see wind," he reminded them. "You can only see what it does.""It's making that garbage can roll down the street," Clover remarked.The three of them watched in silence for a few minutes, then Dad said, "Jesus compared the blowing of the wind to becoming a Christian. We can't actually see the wind, and we can't actually see Jesus coming into somebody's life.""It's His Spirit that comes in, isn't it? And spirits are invisible," said Beau. He looked at Clover. "That's why you still look the same," he told her. "You still have freckles, just like before you trusted in Jesus at Bible camp last summer." Beau loved teasing his sister about her freckles.Dad smiled. "We see what the wind does though, and we also see what Jesus does in a person's life. He changes that person. When someone becomes a Christian, they have a new desire to obey the Lord and show His love to others--and not do things that aren't pleasing to God."Clover nodded. "I still do bad things sometimes, but I don't want to," she said. "When I know I've done something wrong, I ask Jesus to forgive me and trust Him to help me not do it anymore. Before I was saved, I didn't really care very much.""Yeah," said Beau. "And you don't get mad anymore when I tease you about your freckles. That's no fun." Clover grinned and made a face at him, then cringed as a rather large branch cracked and fell off a neighbor's tree. "I'm glad the wind doesn't always blow this hard.""I am too," said Dad. "But I'm even more glad that Jesus is always in our hearts. Even though we can't see Him, we know He's there to help us live in a way that shows how He's changed us."-Matilda H. Nordtvedt