Well, winter is definitely here and already many of us are longing for Spring! As I sit in my office this morning and look out the window there is a beautiful fresh feel as the sun shines and glistens off the snow. It is cold and it is beautiful! Yet, despite this beauty Winter is often the time when we grow weary. We are tempted, like the bears, to hibernate so that we can wake up when it is all over.
In their book “The Heart’s Journey Through the Season” Joyce Rupp and Macrina Weiderkehr write this
“ Winter is the season of waiting. It requires great trust and a willingness to believe that this angst will not last forever. Even though all appears dead and void of movement, there is quiet growth taking place…. While we are in our winter space, we may be tempted to give up, lose hope, to stop believing in ourselves and in the presence of the Holy One because we cannot see our growth. We are required to keep a delicate balance between yielding to winter’s silence and keeping our eyes on a future springtime”
Spring Will Indeed Come
In the last few weeks, like many other churches, we have been focused on year end statistics and budget realities as we prepare for our annual meeting. Many of you have heard me preach about endings and beginnings; about a time of decision making; about doing church differently and thinking outside the box. Some are very worried as we look at the figures, some see only the endings and cannot see what is yet to come. We are very much in the winter season and many are seeing only the darkness.
But Joyce Rupp and Marcrina Weiderhr go on to say:
“This gruff-voiced season has another voice less readily heard. It is the calm and wise voice of encouragement.
Winter offers the assurance that the seeds of life are being tended, that what is needed for future growth
Is simply waiting to burst forth with the wild joy of spring. And spring, will, indeed, come.”
Something Not Even Yet Imagined
Perhaps, as has been said , I look at the world through rose coloured glasses. That may be the case but my world looks great!!! I can see the life that is waiting just below the surface, germinating and preparing to spring into something wild and wonderful!
Our life as a community of faith is being tended in this winter space and preparing for something that we have not even yet imagined! So as we continue through this winter season of our church I share with you part of the prayer found in “The Heart’s Journey Through the Seasons”
“Dear Fruitful Ground of our Being, you turn the sun’s face away from us as you gather us into the darkness of winter. You call us inside to the great fires in our hearts,
those fires we have never believed in.
You ask us to warm the hands of hope in our secret soul places.
You show us heaven seeds that have been planted in our souls,
and you remind us that heaven’s answers rest in the dark ground of our beings…When the deep loneliness comes, you cradle us in your enriching darkness arms.
In the darkness you teach us to trust in what we cannot see,to hope for that which seems impossible,
to have faith in the night of unknowing.
You reveal to us
The necessity of patience and
the holiness of waiting in the dark
as we enter into solitude”
Waiting – Just Waiting
May we open our beings to the vastness of Divine grace and feel the power of life that rests beneath the surface waiting to find new life!
Yes, beneath the surface
waiting
– just waiting
to find new Life
Blessings
Valerie
© 2016 Rev. Valerie Peyton Kingsbury. All rights reserved.