Good morning…
“First snow day of the season!” my sister texted the picture above from her small town in Ohio. As kids growing up in a suburb of Cleveland, we absolutely loved snow days off from school.
“Oh how gorgeous,” I replied. “We had minuscule specks of snow blowing in the air yesterday. Your beautiful snow photo provides quiet encouragement, ‘Hibernate, dear ones, hibernate.’ It feels like we are heading into an extra special season of hibernation with God.”
A few minutes later I stepped out into our relatively cold weather to find an unexpected sight.
“Not the same beauty as your snow,” I texted again, “but ice on top of our container of wood chips is quite unusual here in Atlanta. A different kind of frozen beauty. Enjoy your first snow day!”
This unusual COVID season cannot keep us from going outside, feeling weather, noticing beauty, reaching out, texting loved ones, sharing photos, enjoying firsts, listening for whispers, giving quiet encouragement, connecting from afar. Changing seasons outside shed God’s light inside.
“Our inner winters take many forms – failure, betrayal, depression, death,” writes Parker Palmer. “But every one of them, in my experience, yields to the same advice: ‘The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.’ Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives. But when we walk directly into them – protected from frostbite by the warm garb of friendship or inner discipline or spiritual guidance – we can learn what they have to teach us. Then we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is trustworthy and life-giving, even in the most dismaying season of all” (Let Your Life Speak, 102-103).
As long as the earth endures, nothing will put a stop to planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night (Genesis 8:22, VOICE).
…Sue…
