Confession: I love the SUN ... hot, dry weather ... days and days of blue skies - basically summer! Specifically, summer in sunny California where I grew up.
Winter ... wind, rain, cold ... not so much.
In spite of my natural bent toward wamth and light, one of my favorite Christmas carols is from Christina Rossetti's poem
In the Bleak Midwinter written in 1872. She so vividly descriibes the cold, dark and lonely conditions that characterize winter and the state of the world that Jesus came to so long ago.
In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.
Sadly, these words often describe
the state of my heart - cold, hard. So easily distracted and brought to despair by the darkness in the world and circumstances of life.
Can you relate?
Thanks be to God that He did not leave us there ...
Our God, heaven cannot hold him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign;
In the bleak midwinter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God incarnate,
Jesus Christ.
Into the cold darkness of the world ... and my heart, Jesus came - God with us, Immanuel!
And with His coming, He brought
LIGHT!
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the LIGHT OF LIFE."
John 18:12
The bleak midwinter is the dark backdrop in contrast to the light of the world.
My prayer this Christmas - "Oh Jesus, teach me to not walk in darkness but to follow hard after You, the source of Life."
Rossetti's last line ...
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what can I give Him —
Give my heart.
grace and peace,
Carolyn Jones
Director of Women's Ministry