For the first time in a month it did not snow this week. The kids went to school everyday. I did not shovel snow much (though I did chop ice). However, there was no hint of spring. It is the middle of February and the winter seems to be stretching, still, out beyond every horizon.
I have friends who get depressed this time of year. They claim it is the lack of light but I think it is just that they want a vacation. Winter makes us crazy and we all need an excuse for going south because when the grip of winter is tight it is hard to relax. The world is darker. The bad news a bit more menacing. The days of long summer shadows but a memory….without much expectation warmth will ever come again.
The seasons do this to us. They last just long enough to get us to believe they shall not end. On a day like this when the ice is hard and the snow banks are like stones on either side of the road the cold does seem permanent….as permanent as the ice boulders are hard. And yet it only takes a few warms days to turn those boulders to mush.
It is worth remembering in the darkest of winters that spring comes. It has for all my years and thousands of years before. If we hadn’t experienced spring, time and again, we would be shocked by its arrival. Even knowing it shall come for sure the idea of spring is shocking from the perspective of winter darkness.
The good news is that light always follows darkness, the bitter blasts are only for a while, the days always get longer, and the world will once again turn green. It has forever and it will again. Just this morning crunching out to the mailbox there was a bit more light than usual. It is coming! And it will not be so very long before we will think of these days as not possible. The sun will rise early, stay long, and the whole world will awaken, alive.
What is true for winter is also true for the darkness in our souls. No sadness is forever, no hurt ever stings always, no despair can hold permanently, there is always consolation ahead….that we can always be confident in. It is God’s promise. God has made a world of seasons, a world of redemptions, a world of turn-arounds. It has always been so. Love can follow hate, forgiveness can follow violence, even life can follow death. It, of course seems impossible, and it probably is except in faith. Only faith can envision the transformation. And faith is like the memory of spring. It gives us a vision of what shall come.
Darkness never overcomes the light. The death of winter lasts just so long. It cannot be cold forever. It is worth remembering as the thin winter sunlight seems unable to have a chance against the mountains of snow. All of it will feed the very life that lies dormant below. This is God’s way. The world shall change and so can we. Redemption is as close as the hope that holds it.
