Storm Season

In this strange summer season, the U.S. is seeing extreme cycles of heat and cold and widespread, violent storms and tornadoes. Just as the weather can be unpredictable and destructive, so can the storms in our lives feel devastating. But even these can serve a purpose, Swedenborg tells us.

Across the U.S., strange weather is causing unseasonable storms, tornadoes, and other violent weather patterns that leave destruction in their wake. While the storms in the physical world are random and unpredictable, Swedenborg tells us that on a spiritual level, storms can be a sign of good things to come.  

In the language of correspondences that gives a new spiritual perspective to the literal text of the Bible, storms correspond to a force that disrupts the status quo. So, for example:  

You will disperse them, and the wind will carry them off, and a storm will scatter them. And you will rejoice in Jehovah; in the Holy One of Israel you will glory. (Isaiah 41:16) 

In this verse, Swedenborg tells us, the wind is dispersing evil, and the storm is scattering it, so that God can bring order to what is left behind (Secrets of Heaven§842:4).  

The same thing happens to a person who is undergoing a process of spiritual rebirth: 

Before being reduced to order, it is very common for everything to fall into confusion or seeming chaos. This allows things that cling together poorly to separate, and when they have separated, the Lord arranges them in their place.     

Nature offers parallels, since in it too each and every thing first falls into some degree of disorder before being put in order. If the skies did not storm, causing unlike elements to scatter, the air would never clear; destructive forces would amass and wreak havoc.     

The human body displays the same characteristic. Unless all the components of the blood, whether compound or pure, were continuously and cyclically combined and pumped into a single heart first and mingled there, the fluid component would coagulate in a fatal way. The individual elements would never be distributed to perform their proper functions. 

It is the same with a person who is regenerating. (Secrets of Heaven §842:3)

For more about regeneration, see our video “Regeneration: How Radical Love is Born” on our offtheLeftEye YouTube channel. You can also read a collection of Swedenborg’s writings about regeneration in our book Regeneration: Spiritual Growth and How It Works.  

For more on why God allows disasters to happen, check out our video “Why Bad Things Happen” or the book Why Does God Let It Happen? by Bruce Henderson.