Winter Shall Pass
July 5, 2011
Excerpt from Song of Songs 2: 11 - 12
"For now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come . . ."
Reflection by Anthony B. Robinson
Winter is a season but also a metaphor for a season of the spirit. Wintry times come to all. We lose someone we love and who loves us, and everything goes grey and bleak. Or we lose our way, our path in the world, and feel like a child lost in a dark wood, frightened and alone.
Winters of the heart can come even in July. The loss of a job takes away not only income and security, but role and relationships. A depression or a manic episode disorients us or someone we love. Or a time of crisis engulfs and threatens our family, our church, or our community.
When we are in the midst of such a winter of the heart, it seems it will never end. It feels as if there will never be any new day, never again a time when life will be joy-filled and glad. That’s not true. Both Scripture and experience testify, this winter too shall pass. A time of singing shall come.
As a theological concept, "grace" has other and deeper dimensions, but it means at least this: winters of the heart do pass, a new spring of the spirit will, by God’s mercy, come. Where snow now lies heavy, flowers shall bloom. Where branches appear dead, there will again be abundant fruit.
Even though we have, as we ought, done things to prepare this new season, planting seeds and the like; still it is grace. It is gift, strange and wondrous. We rejoice and utter, "thank you."
Trust this; winter shall pass, the time of singing shall come.
Prayer
"When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Christ's warm touch can call us back to life again,
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again like wheat that rises green." (NCH, No. 238)
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