The Fifty-Ninth Day of Winter

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Last Sunday I braved zero degree weather to make it to church.

Well, okay, perhaps there was no bravery involved as it was accompanied by altogether too much complaining.

Today was even colder.

Yesterday, when SOS and I were discussing the forecasted high for today rising all the way to -4 degrees (with the windchill settling it down around -25), he joked that maybe this downward trend of Sunday temperatures was my own little version of John 21. "Do you love me?... Then feed my sheep." Only, "Do you love me?... Then attend church in [increasingly cold] weather."

We both laughed, although perhaps there was a fair bit of internal squirming with my laugh.

So I didn't complain at all this morning (not even to myself!). I dug out my warmest layers, stuffed my purse full of extra cold weather accessories for the kids for when they started complaining, and off to church it was.

(And it was only -1... three whole degrees warmer than forecasted!)


Musing about the ironies of this all, I didn't really tune into the church service until halfway through the hymn "Great is Thy Faithfulness" and then it was only because my distracted brain registered the word "winter."

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest

It's been awhile since I've looked at the words for this song. I sing it somewhat frequently, but more on my own than in church, with the lyrics scripted for me to follow. And somewhere along the way, I had internalized this line to be merely a bit of poetic metonymy observing that God is faithful year round.

But that's not what it says.

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Can it be? Winter testifies to God's faithfulness, mercy and love? Even -25 degree windchill days? 

It seems that instead of me proving my love to God on these below negative days, these days are proving God's love to me. There's a tendril of internal recognition affirming this to be true. But merely a tendril. 

Fortunately, I still have plenty of winter to think on it.

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