Winter

I have come to love winter. It just might be my favorite time of the year.

I love the colors. The faded russet of the oak leaves, some fallen and some clinging to their branches until spring. I love the light brown of the cornfields, harvested and sitting empty until ready to give life again. I love the deep green of a grove of pines poking through the mottled brown of the mountainsides. I especially love all of these colors against the backdrop of the gray-blue of winter cloud cover.

I love the crispness of the air. It makes me feel like I can breathe. I love the starkness of the landscape. I can see better. Every tree branch is outlined and out my front windows I can see for miles and miles, a view of the distant mountain peaks across the county and into the next. No other season can hold a candle to the sunsets of winter.

And then the sounds of winter. Winter is the quietest season.

There is a stillness to winter. A slowing down.

Winter, of all seasons, is a season of rest. Animals hibernate. Plants hunker down underground. Life seems to be reduced the the bare essentials.

I feel like I am in a season of winter. And I need this season of winter. I need the quiet. I need the pace. I need to be able to cut away to the bare essentials. I need to see clearly.

I know winter may not look productive. But, for the most part, it is a good and necessary part of life.

If you want to buy a piece of land, look at it in winter. That is the season when the vegetation dies back and you can assess what you have. The barrenness of the landscape allows you to see.

I seem to be in a season of winter, not just on the calendar, but in my life. I am slowing down. I am craving quiet. In the stillness of winter and in the barrenness of my own personal landscape I am able to take an inventory. I am able to see more clearly who I am and who God is and why he has me on the planet in the first place.

For everything there is a season....

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