The older you got the tougher it got. You felt the cold more, and you didn’t take to sleeping out on the ground so much. A man that old should have himself a home, a place to hang his hat while he waited for the sunset.”
–Louis L’Amour (Conagher)
“From the chamber of the south comes the whirlwind, And cold from the scattering winds of the north.”
–Job 37:9 (NKJV)
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Brrr, it’s cold outside; sure glad this is East Texas. My toes surely couldn’t handle that below zero temperature anymore. I’ve seen the snow in the northeast, and it sure is pretty–pretty that is until it begins to turn to slush, or causes the pipes to freeze, or the car won’t start, or when the vehicles get around and it turns black from exhaust. My thoughts, in fact, my warmest thoughts are of those family members up in the northern lands. I was thinking, Christmas is almost upon us, that means Winter will proceed it by a few days, next Monday if I’m not mistaken. It reminds me of a carol written in 1872 by Christina Rossetti that has made a resurgence in the last decade or so.
“In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty winds make moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone…”
Water like a stone, that means ice–ice means cold! Makes my toes ache just thinking of it. If I had a fireplace I’d put another log on as I feel that frosty breeze bring a chill down my neck.
That brings to my mind part of John Denver’s “Season’s Suite: Winter.”
“It’s cold and it’s getting colder.
It’s gray and white and winter all around.
And oh, I must be getting older,
All this snow is trying to get me down.
There’s a fire in the corner slowly dying away…”
Brrr, winter, cold weather and it’s giving me shivers. But then, it is proper that we celebrate the birth of Jesus at this time of year. The world was cold as death; dark without the hint of light. Into this bleak, dark, dreary, cold world came God’s Son. The world was in the throes of death and now comes God’s Son to defeat death. There was darkness all around, but now there is a Light.
“To you, who were spiritually dead all the time that you drifted along on the stream of this world’s ideas of living, and obeyed its unseen ruler (who is still operating in those who do not respond to the truth of God), to you Christ has given life! We all lived like that in the past, and followed the impulses and imaginations of our evil nature, being in fact under the wrath of God by nature, like everyone else.”
–Ephesians 2:1-3 (Phillips)
Death has been defeated, yet those who do not accept Jesus as the only begotten Son of God, are doomed to feel its cold, icy grip. The Holy Spirit has come to bring us warmth, to fill us with His love. Oh, sure winter still brings physical cold with snow, ice, and chilling winds. Jack Frost and Old Man Winter still play havoc, but there is now a Light in the darkness, and with that Light is a warmth that comes to the soul. Yes, there is still physical death, but now that coldness that grips the corpse had been defeated and we can look expectantly to that heavenly realm from whence that divine Babe came. Plus, there is that small gift in the midst of winter and the “virus” that has beset the world. Jack Frost, won’t be “nipping at your nose” for you are wearing a mask when going out (ahemm).