Dear Friends,

When they were drawing up the Russian-Finnish border, a farmer had to decide if he wanted to be in Finland, but he did not want to offend the Russian officials. They came to him and wanted to know why he wanted to be in Finland. The farmer replied, “It has always been my desire to live in Mother Russia, but at my age I wouldn’t be able to survive another Russian winter” (Told by Anthony De Mello, Awareness [Image Books: New York, 1992], p. 143).

David, on the other hand, said the ice and chill of winter is something to be praised (Ps 148:7-8).

So, is winter to be avoided or praised? It all depends on our preparation for it. It can be devastating if winter’s cold and frost comes in the middle of springtime.

I travel to Washington, D.C. on business in May most years. I was there this past week, in fact, with business and educational leaders from my region. We were pleading our case to legislators and bureaucrats for support of various programs and projects important to our county.

On another visit some years back, I joined a small group that met with a deputy cabinet secretary to obtain enhanced funding for workforce development. We made our presentation in his office filled with the photos and memorabilia acquired in proximity to the politically powerful.

The meeting went well we told each other as we left the building and walked outside into the warm May sunshine. The Capitol dome stood above us in grandeur. A breeze stirred the flags. The green lawns and trees of the Capitol Mall stretched before us.

There was a gap of time before our next appointment. A beloved friend in the group invited me to visit the National Gallery of Art with him. He is an academic leader with a reputation on three continents for his scholarship, vision and flair. I am always stimulated by our conversations. The thought of spending this moment with him in contemplation of great art excited me.

On the granite steps of the Gallery, his cell phone rang. His spouse needed to return to California immediately to see a pain specialist. A slip of a surgeon’s scalpel had damaged a nerve and seared her waking life with agony. They were seeking relief for her whenever and wherever it might be found.

My friend’s cheer vanished in grim concern after the call. It was as if a sudden cold front had descended bringing winter’s chill to the balmy Capitol Mall. Winter of a kind can indeed occur in May sending even the powerful to seek refuge against ravages of frostbite and wind.

David said to “Praise the Lord [for] snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command” (Ps 148:8). To praise God for a blizzard sounds like the crazed delusions of a luge sledder. What rational human soul can love a God who commands such inclement weather when he has the power to make springtime and every person pain-free?

Earlier that week, I was signing copies of my book at a store in suburban Maryland when a young man leaned over the table. “I heard you interviewed on the radio.” he said. “I want to know how you deal with the things you talked about like the death of your childhood sweetheart.”

“It’s hard,” I said in the sudden intimacy of a shared story. “There are no easy answers, no quick fixes.”

“You’re going to tell me it takes time, right?” he asked in a tone that told me he’s heard this answer before like one more bumper sticker insisting on absolute truth in the transient flow of rush hour traffic.

“How much can he know?” I wondered as I looked at him. He was young, in his twenties I guessed; tall, spare, smiling with a prematurely graying brush of hair.

“Yes, that’s what I’m going to tell you because that’s all I know. I didn’t think I could breathe again when I lost her, but I did.

“The sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night. After a while you think, ‘Well, what’s one more day?’ The days turn into weeks and months and years. What you thought would never happen, does. I’ve been married for many years to a woman I love and we have a wonderful son. Have you also suffered a loss?” I asked him.

He hesitated, searching my eyes for a handhold of trust. “Not a death,” he said, “a relationship.”

“I’m sorry.”

He said, “It’s not as bad as what happened to you–no chance for friendship, no chance to talk again. I might still be able to have that chance, though.”

He obviously hadn’t given up on her, but he was hurting enough to talk with a total stranger on a Sunday afternoon in a crowded bookstore. A cold wind was blowing through his May.

“It will get better,” I told him. “I believe that life is a continuum, not a circle. Doors close behind us, but doors open before us all the way into eternity with new circumstances and new people. That’s the one belief that makes us Christian, you know. Because of Jesus coming to reconcile us with God we will live with God forever. Heaven is a real place and God wants us there with him and that makes all the difference.”

“Yes,” he said in response.

I looked across the aisle to the gift section. I saw the “Precious Moments” figurines with verses inscribed like “Hope believes all things.” I saw the potpourri sachets in little flower pots with inspirational sayings and the ubiquitous Thomas Kinkaide prints with lighted cottages beside streams flowing through woods with no poison ivy.

“God,” I prayed, “help me make more sense to this man than those fantasies.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Ed.”

“Ed, Paul says we suffer, we endure, we build character, and out of that we begin to hope and that hope doesn’t disappoint us because God’s love is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that he gives us (Rom 5:1-5).

“We get a process, not an answer. That process builds our hearts into something that God can fill with love. One step follows another like spring follows winter. If this weren’t true I could never have written a book about grace because there was no way that I could make this up. God had to work this out in me for me. The same possibility is there for you.”

“OK, I’ll buy your book,” he said.

I laughed.

The poet Shelley asked the truth in “Ode to a West Wind.” “If winter comes, can spring be far behind.” The severity of that winter will determine the fertility of the spring that follows.

Our winter was soft and warm in the western United States that year. We were suffering a drought with a reduced water supply and early forest fires. Rattlesnakes were found beside backyard pools and faucets looking for a drink. This usually happens in August and September, not May. Oh, we needed winter clouds to shade us from the hell of unrelenting sunshine. Winter   gives context to the comforting words of grace whispered to each of us.

What happens if the frost comes early and kills the vines before harvest? What happens if the snow drifts way deeper than anything that we can handle? We wait, that’s what. We wait while winter does its work reshaping, replenishing, and refreshing the dry and empty places. While we wait, we remember spring and Jesus Christ who said­-
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Even as we contend with our winters, we trust that there will be other seasons. Richard Foster says “Trust is confidence in the character of God. Firmly and deliberately you say, ‘ I do not understand what God is doing or even where God is, but I know that he is out to do me good.’ This is trust. This is how to wait.”

I have lived through 63 winters, some of them harsher than others. It’s been long enough to fill the aquifers of my soul with grace. These words are the spillage. There have been 63 springs too, some of them drier than others. These all have taught me to trust the shared heartbreak of Ed and to cringe from the platitudes of fantasy that would deny the chill or drought we are experiencing is real.

After my loss, while I was still in college, I read and memorized these words from God to the prophet Isaiah about spring to come­
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Let your winter in May do the work of God within you. It’s called “grace.”

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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