I’ve heard that some people actually like winter. Some rhapsodize at the mere change of seasons, as though change itself is a positive good. Others enjoy the crisp dry air, or the carpet of white that covers the dull browns of late fall, or the fairy tale look of a forest glistening in the low hanging sun after an ice storm. Still others sing the praises of winter in the warmer southern climes where they read with delight reports of blizzards back home. Garrison Keillor, host and creator of the radio program, A Prairie Home Companion, is always singing the praises of winter in his semi—fictional home town, Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. But he praises winter for a different reason. He says that the residents of that frozen town love winter, because, "like the prospect of death by hanging, it tends to focus your attention." He continues in that same vein. "Winter can kill you. And that makes you alive and alert. That’s why we love winter." For a variety of reasons, a surprising number of people like winter.
But I suspect that most of us feel more like the wise men complaining about their journey in T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, "The Coming of the Magi."
A cold coming we had of it.
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey;
The ways deep, and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
Those are the words I associate with winter—the very dead of winter, the worst time of the year. Whether winter brings the icy blizzards of Minnesota or the all day drizzles of Washington or the continual damp of England or the endless traffic jams caused by the glut of tourists in southern Florida, many people find winter to be a time of discomfort and dreariness at least, and danger and death at worst. Count me in that number. The older I get, the less I can tolerate, let alone enjoy the icy blasts of winter in Michigan.
And that’s precisely why I want to spend these next few weeks of winter reflecting with you on the grace of God that comes to us especially in winter. I want to warm your soul with the promises of God for the bleak mid—winter. You might be surprised to know how often the Bible mentions winter, especially given the fact that it was written in the more moderate climate of the Middle East. Searching the Scripture, I have found a number of references which suggest that winter can be a time of special grace for us, a time when some of God’s most precious promises can bring new life to our faith.
Today I want to look at this lovely poetic promise at the end of that great flood in the days of Noah. In deep disgust and with profound sorrow over the utter sinfulness of the human race, God had just opened the floodgates of heaven and the springs of the deep to cleanse the earth of its moral pollution and spiritual corruption. The water covered the earth for over a year. It was a disaster that totally disrupted the order of nature——seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, life and death. There was only water, "water, water everywhere," as Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner puts it. Water and death.
As we gazed in horror upon the devastation produced by the tidal waves that came crashing out of the Indian Ocean several years ago or on the flooding in China or Pakistan or the American Midwest this past year, we simply can’t imagine the effect such catastrophic floods have had in those places. Well, the flood of Genesis was much worse. It was total destruction, says the Bible, all life, human and animal, upon the whole earth. That is so incomprehensible that skeptics deny it ever happened, that it was even possible. But the Bible says it did happen. It was the judgment of an almighty, sovereign God on a world that desperately needed to be cleansed of its moral and spiritual filth.
But here at the end of it all is a word of grace, a lovely promise that it won’t happen again, as long as the earth endures. Oh, there will be floods again, as we have just tragically seen. And people will die in them, sometimes by the thousands. But as long as the earth endures, the judgment of God will not disrupt all of human existence and all of nature in such a total way. God guarantees that the rhythm of nature——seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, day and night, summer and, yes, even winter——will never cease. That’s a promise from the sovereign God.
That means that winter is in the divine order of things. It is a part of how God has arranged the world. It is a gift of God’s grace. Winter comes from his hand, not as judgment upon a fallen world, but as a blessing upon creation. So, in the songbook of God’s redeemed people, we hear hymns of praise to God for the gift of winter. Psalm 147 begins, "Praise the Lord," and includes this as one reason to do so, in vs. 16. "He spreads the snow like wool, and scatters the frost like ashes." Psalm 148 harks back to this promise in Genesis 8, when it says in vs. 6, "He set them in place for ever and ever. Praise the Lord from the earth, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding."
When you are stuck in a snow drift and the cost of heating your home is shooting through the roof and you are getting cabin fever because it’s just too cold to go outside, it can be pretty difficult to see winter as a blessing. When you are sick of the constant drizzle and the mold and mildew is beginning to cover everything, it is tough to praise God for the gift of winter. When the flood of tourists create gridlock on Florida highways and the peace and quiet of your beach home is destroyed by college students on break, winter may seem more a curse than a blessing. But it is a blessing, because there are things that happen in winter, to nature and to us, that are necessary to life, to growth, to fruitfulness.
As I researched this subject, I found frequent references to the way winter is a blessing to plant life. That didn’t make any sense to me, because it looks to me like winter just kills plants. So I called my friendly local greenhouse person. She said that the dead of winter is absolutely essential to the life of plants for a whole host of reasons. When winter comes, perennials go dormant. They go into a resting phase. They need to take a break, to slow down, to soak up water in their roots, in order to gain strength for the growing season to come. A thick blanket of snow is really good for them, because it keeps the ground at an even temperature. Below the few inches of ground that are frozen, all kinds of life is going on, as the roots get stronger and deeper. She said that flowers like tulips don’t do well in warm climates. They need the winter to build up energy in their bulbs so they can shoot up in the spring. We call it the dead of winter, but it is really a time that is essential to life the rest of the year.
But the blessing of winter is even more profound than that. Do you know what the anthropic principle is? I read about it in a recent Time magazine, which defined it simply as the idea that the universe is, against all odds, perfectly suited for life. The article then asked, "Could that really be an accident?" It went on to explain. "Many of the most fundamental characteristics of our cosmos——the relative strengths of gravity, electromagnetism and the forces that operate inside atomic nuclei as well as the masses and relative abundance of different particles——are so finely tuned that if just one of them were even slightly different, life as we know it couldn’t exist."
For example, and I’m quoting here, "if the so—called weak nuclear interaction were a tiny bit stronger or weaker than it is, stars wouldn’t blow up in mammoth supernovas that spread elements like carbon and oxygen out into space——and without those elements, there would be no water and no organic molecules." And, "if the strong nuclear force were just one half of 1% stronger or weaker, stars couldn’t make carbon or oxygen in the first place."
Isn’t that fascinating? Yes, it is a little tough to understand, so let’s talk directly about winter. Right now the scientific community and many environmentalists and politicians are up in arms about global warming. They warn that there will be catastrophic effects if the global temperatures rise just a few degrees——if, in other words, winter is changed. Now I’m well aware that not everyone agrees with that doomsday message. But whatever you think about global warming, it is an illustration of the anthropic principle——how finely tuned the universe is, so that it supports life. It is absolutely essential to human life that there be summer and winter.
The article in Time pointed out that scientists don’t know why the universe is so hospitable to life. That’s why some are drawn to a new book, Biocosm. It posits that our universe might have been invented by a race of super—intelligent extraterrestrial beings. To which I say: How far will you go to avoid the obvious answer to the mystery of the anthropic principle? The universe was invented by a super—intelligent extraterrestrial being. His name is Yahweh, the God of Israel, the Father of Jesus Christ. He built into his creation all the components that make life possible. And here in our text, he simply repeats the order of things. Winter is part of the blessing of God that makes life possible here on earth.
You can apply this to spiritual matters as well. We all go through winter in our lives, when it’s cold and barren and bleak, when it never stops blowing and drizzling and molding. It’s the dead of winter, when there is no fruit, no flower, no life, or at least life goes dormant. But such times are part of the rhythm of spiritual life, a part of the order of things in the kingdom of grace. In such times things happen that cannot happen any other time. Think, for example, of the silence of a winter day when a thick blanket of snow muffles all sound.
I mention that because I just read about a scientific project that is listening for messages from outer space using huge radio telescopes. The problem is that there must be absolute silence around these listening stations. Any noise drowns out the nearly inaudible signals from deep space. So the government creates quiet zones around the observatories, where no electronic devices like cell phones can be used. That’s what the winter of your soul does. It creates a quiet zone. Everything slows down until life seems frozen. And then you can be still and know God. The still of winter is a perfect time to hear that still small voice of God from deep space.
Of course, when you want to join the magi in complaining about the worst time of year and how dead you feel, it’s not easy to be quiet. That’s why God gives us his signs of his grace. When you are caught in the bleak midwinter of your soul, the only way to remember that winter is part of God’s gracious plan for your life is to keep your eyes on those signs. I’m thinking here of our story from Genesis 8. Right after his gracious words about the seasons continuing as long as the earth endures, God pointed to the heavens and said, "That rainbow is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you…for all generations to come. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life." The rainbow is a sign of God’s gracious intention for his world. The rhythm of nature will continue——"seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease as long as the earth endures."
But there’s a greater sign of God’s grace than a rainbow. In my research on winter in the Bible, I found this fascinating passage in Daniel 7. The text is set in the winter time of Israel’s history; it was the worst time of their lives as they were locked in the icy grip of the Babylonian exile. That’s when God pointed Daniel to a greater sign of God’s grace in the heavens. "I looked," writes Daniel, "and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven." The Son of Man approached God, whom Daniel identifies as the Ancient of Days (whose clothing, says verse 9, was white as snow). And "the Son of Man was given authority, glory and sovereign power….His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will never pass away…."
That is a prophecy of the coming of Jesus. Daniel reminds us that Jesus Christ, the Son of Man and Son of God, looms over the nations and over nature. Summer and winter, springtime and harvest are all under his control. As long as the earth endures, God will keep his promise and give us the gift of winter with its snow and ice. Never again will the whole world be destroyed by a flood. However, the New Testament says that God will cleanse the world one more time, not by water, but by fire, when the Son of Man comes again with the clouds of heaven. 2 Peter 3:10 says, "The Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a loud noise; the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare."
In the day of fire, as in the days of ice, God points us to the sign of his grace, the Son of Man coming on the clouds. Fix your eyes and your faith on him, and God will give you life abundant and eternal. That is a sure promise for the bleak mid—winter of your life.
Prayer
Oh Faithful God, God of nature and of redemption, we thank you for the promise that as long as the earth endures the seasons will continue and in all the seasons of life your grace can come to us. I pray now, Lord, for those who are experiencing a bleak midwinter in their lives at this very moment. I ask that you will come to them and in all the snow and ice of their soul that you will give them the grace they need to grow in a way that only this time can produce. May they see the sign of the rainbow and the sign of the cross as an encouragement to continue on and not give up, even when it seems that life has ground to a frozen halt. I pray this in the name of Christ, the Son of Man and the Son of God, Amen.
Stan Mast
Stan Mast has been the Minister of Preaching at the LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church in downtown Grand Rapids, MI for the last 18 years. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1971 and has served four churches in the West and Midwest regions of the United States. He also served a 3 year stint as Coordinator of Field Education at Calvin Seminary. He has earned a BA degree from Calvin College and a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Calvin and a Doctor of Ministry from Denver Seminary. He is happily married to Sharon, a special education teacher, and they have two sons and four grandchildren. Stan is a voracious reader and works out regularly. He also calls himself a car nut and an “avid, but average” golfer.
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