The Winter Of The Soul
As I look out my window I see a world covered in white, as winter is taking hold of the mountain terrain. The air is cooling, the clouds accumulating, and the winds are blowing in full furry as though to announce the coming arrival of a new winter storm. My driveway has become an ice-skating rink, a daily challenge, and a continuous reason for funny stories shared between my roommate and myself. I have become an expert in “shuffling,” in an effort to conquer the ice, though on occasion the ice wins.
I love the quiet beauty the snow brings, the hush it settles over the lives of busy people, as though it were God’s muffler for life’s noise like a mandatory Sabbath. Winter is the season of hope and a time of rest; one that requires great trust as it waits through the stillness. I know how easy the unrest comes as one is faced with a silent season of waiting. But I am learning now more than ever that times of waiting are for times of resting.
I can’t even begin to write of the struggle I have been in this last year, the last few months particularly, and the last few weeks dreadfully. To anticipate the fulfillment of a long awaited hope or dream, and to find it shattered to pieces at your feet instead is a very daunting experience! I’ve been there. Not just once, not just twice. No. Would you laugh to believe I’ve been there three times in the last year alone? It was like coming around a corner, after a long and enduring, winding, bending journey, expecting to at last find the road’s end around the next bend. Wrong. Instead you find it stretching out before you yet again, an endless path before your feet. And so the waiting begins again.
I cannot deny, however, that hope still remains and clings just as close even without reason. For this is the nature of hope.
…Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Romans 8:24-25).
That is why I call winter the season of hope; for it is the season when one looks without seeing, and waits for what it hopes with patience. I once found myself struggling to hope with patience, and related the circumstance to planting a seed in the soil. I took that seed of hope and I buried it deep in Christ. I gave it to Him, and watered it with my tears and my prayers. Countless times it felt as though I were staring at the barren ground for ages! To hold on in hope is not so difficult as to hope with patience, especially when one does not see any outward evidence. I was encouraged one day by the thought that like burying a seed in the ground, sometimes we bury our hope. And just as we do not see any immediate signs of growth or life, change is happening beneath the soil unknown to us. During another time of struggle I expressed it like this:
I wore sadness like a cloak today
Like a gray cloud it hung over my heart
It relented to the pain inside
And dropped down tears like the rain
Down on the sleeping soul of a winter soul
On a seed of hope long buried deep
Long reckoned dead it only sleeps
Watered by the very sadness that breaks overhead
Waiting for the day when that resounding YES
Will break the soil and set it free
And Sorrow’s seed becomes Joy’s fruition
-Saturday, December 6th, 2008
Have you ever looked on nature with a sense of sympathy, gazing at what appears to be a world of lifeless things? There is nothing quite so lonely as looking at a patch of naked trees and remembering the beauty and robust life that once filled their expanse with green. Aspens are my favorite. I used to live in an area surrounded by them, and loved their glorious beauty in the summertime. Few moments of peace have I had as walking the lane in summer, listening to the trembling sound of their leaves as the warm breeze moved through them like a hand over a harp. I would walk there again in the seasons of winter with a longing remembrance of those sunny days. They stand now only lifeless and bare, stripped down to nothing.
Just this morning I was meditating on a song called I Surrender, and it struck chords deep in my soul. It would be no hard to thing to write of the discouragement and despair that one often finds in the wintry seasons. But what is far less obvious, yet no less true, is the deep beauty, the perfect peace, and greater knowledge of the love of Christ that we can find more in this place than perhaps in any other season. There are so many treasures ready to be discovered here, if we have the courage to push past what we see on the surface to find the priceless joys hidden underneath! This is the season to worship, for worship declares our trust in God. Worship puts hope back in our hearts again
Are you looking for healing? There is no healing balm like that of worship. For as we pour out our hearts in love to God, He pours back His love on us, washing over every hurt and broken place, making us whole and complete again. What is so ironic is that we could never know this process of being made whole if we were not first incomplete. We could never know the deepest compassions and love of God if we never walked through broken places. It is in these deep places and hardest times that we tap into the Father’s sweetest mercies. Even the earth needs its winter seasons. It cannot have new life again without displacing the old. Winter keeps the earth seasonally healthy, as it does our souls.
I had an experience this last weekend that brought a great breakthrough in my life. In desperation I was looking for an answer to something that had for months weighed me down. When you have waited for something for a long time, hearing no again is never easy. I thought I was ready to hear any answer that God would give me, but I had no idea how unready I really was. My heart had been shattered to pieces at my feet, and looking at it was like looking at those aspen trees again. I felt lifeless and bare, stripped down to nothing. But over the process of a few days, as I kept coming to God in worship, I found my heart softening again. It was the Lord preparing me to hear not only the answer, but to see His love behind the answer. It was in this place of worship that I came to surrender. When we come to God with surrendered hearts, He meets us in extraordinary ways. As I began to say, “I trust you God. I want your best. I surrender,” found Him piecing things back together again. Peace came back again, and hope filled every crevice. It was like watching the first snow of the season fall, covering the naked earth with its beauty. Surrender to it: surrender to God in the season. You never know the glorious joys and beauties to be found in the most unexpected times and places. This is how we are prepared for a new season of life! This is the season to hope.
