Yes, the weather has been a whole lot more November than April recently! At the Hovland Dock when a gale meant waves and large sections of ice flowing over and under the dock, it seemed November. It was mid- April, but with thick blowing snowfall, felt November. In one day’s snow tracks of deer, rabbit, wolf, and humans appeared. The next day’s snow erased them all. Erased too was an April outlook; left was an inner sense of darker days and deeper snow to slog through. The description “life seems backwards, inside out, upside down” fit.
Cook County folks had been putting away the pleasures of winter’s skiing and ice-fishing and were anticipating gardening and canoeing. “November’s re-arrival” descended with a wearying sense of going backwards to a season of dark and cold, disrupting anticipations.
Disruption to anticipated weather is one thing. Upside-down, inside-out, backwards disruption to life itself is more deeply frightening and unnerving. We have daily weather forecasts, but without daily “life-forecasts” disruptions are more sudden. A health diagnosis, a family relationship torn apart, a deeply saddening worry about a family member or friend, a job loss, an experience of fear; losing a loved home—each can show up without prediction or chance to prepare.
We can try to just “shovel” our own way out, or we can realize the truth that we are stuck in snow and dark that requires more than our self. I know, I know—it is hard, isn’t it, to give up the idea that we can individually find our own way through, out-of, and beyond the unexpected times and agonies? We are so accustomed to thinking, “I can do it. Keep at it. One more shovel-full. One more pulling-over to get the ice off the windshield.” But life isn’t a winter storm. Hurt runs deeper than muscle aches. Fear is greater than ice-on-windshield. Where do we turn?
To one another, of course. (Easier said than done for most of us!) And even more so, we, as have thousands of generations before us, can turn to the Certain but Mysterious Presence of God. For it is God who strengthens us, defends us even against our own turmoil, shows us a way-to-be in the midst of the gales that blow against our expectations.
In the Bible we are given God’s word of God’s presence, comfort to ancestors far beyond number. They, like each of us, have known fear, danger, disorientation, and have found an anchor hold especially in the Psalms. In the Psalms, we too can, in the midst of all, find a way to utter within ourselves and to others:
“The Lord makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters.”
These are not words to demean us when the reality of weariness, fear, or uncertainty blows into life. Rather, they are words to remind us: God gives us God to lean on, God to hear, God to show us that in dryness of landscape, there is green; in roiling waters of experience, there is the quiet and strengthening of refreshing from God to hold to.
In the depth of ourselves, we long for a certainty to cling to that which transcends what we can physically see, intuitionally expect. And into that longing, comes this: God’s Love and Care for each of us has no limit of season, expectation, experience, anticipation, storm. In all of life, we can find God’s Love and Care to bring rest in storms, peace in what is expected and unexpected, for God is with us, always.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month our contributor is Pastor Kris Garey, Trinity Lutheran Church, Hovland.
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