In the Bleak Midwinter … Hope

          As you read this, maybe a balmy thaw will have softened the region. But as I write this, the expression "winter's frozen grip" is not just a metaphor. All is white and stone-hard. Since Christmas, the snow-coat has increasingly solidified to become like permanent landscape. It makes me think of my old college favorite, Kurt Vonnegut, who in one of his novels imagined something called "ice-nine," a product of fiendish science which if introduced into any of earth's bodies of water would spread to cause all water to crystallize, including that which would fall from the sky … in other words, the end of life, "not with a bang, but a whimper."

          The season's condition seems to increase the hardness and intransigence of our real-life problems, whether the painful stubbornness of illness, the unemployment which seems to stretch into the future, or the brink of war and permanence of tension and conflict. These, too, can seem part of the landscape.

But like a subtle mystery, the pale light of winter is now extending itself by meager increments, day by day. If we are alert to it, we notice it. The warmth may not yet be felt, but its coming is now certain. The gentling of earth, the springtime of life, is not a memory but an inevitability.

          And in this season of dark and cold, the church talks about light, and hope. We are witnesses to the faith that the Light of the World is with us. The birth and ministry, suffering and resurrection of Christ took place in the setting of the world's darkness - but blaze with the promise that God's is the last word, and that is love for the world and the people Jesus came to save. Whatever the struggles of the present, the future we are drawn toward is God's.

          It's hard to claim and live this faith in the wint'ry landscape of our present. But the church has done so for many a winter, and we are in good company as we seek to extend a measure of light and hope - and warmth - to each other and the world around.

Peace,

Rod