Snow has fallen in Toronto. It was one of those snows where it was only a couple of degrees away from rain, but then the temperature dropped another ten degrees Celsius and all that soft fluffy snow got crunchy and crisp – more like crumbly ice than soft fluffiness.
In optimism I left my bike out in the backyard, in the hopes that the snow would all melt in short order and I could bike again. Or maybe this year I would choose to bike while the snow was still on the roads. I’ve heard that they’ve been clearing some of the bike lanes. But I suspect it will sit in the back yard, unused, for a good several weeks now. I have read that signs of the season point to a snowy winter.
We’re also only days away from the solstice when we get less sunshine than in any other season of the year. But even when the sun is shining, the bitter cold of the air turns us down and into our coats and scarves, rather than towards the rays of the sun.
This season seems to turn us inwards in more ways than one. My wife and I have both felt a drag that we hadn’t noticed a month ago. But of course with all the different factors and influences of life, we are left to guess and to wonder…
“Maybe we’re not getting as much sleep… ”
“Maybe we’re not eating well…”
Or is it the darkness? Is it the lack of sun that leaves us dragging a little each day, that makes it that much harder to write, harder to study, harder to be kind? It seems too easy to blame these things on the time of year.
On the other hand, it is different this year. If it was just the darkness it would be the same every year, so something is different this year. I remembered last week as I got ready to go to my office Christmas party that the year before I had felt a weight on my shoulders that filled me with dread as I considered the thought of being at a party. I remember wondering if I could get away with just standing in a corner. Could I just go home? Yet, I didn’t dread it enough to want to miss it. I didn’t want to miss the free food. It’s still a party, and I’ve never liked missing things. So I dragged myself there standing off to the side silently wishing that I was somewhere else.
But this year it was so different. I may be dragging. I may be tired. I may not be as productive in my mornings, but that weight is not there, and I noticed it strongly as I got ready to go to the party.
It’s tempting to try and explain this to you, but I should be honest with you and admit that I can’t be entirely certain why this is true. As with all these different influences and confluences of events making us question this tiredness and the drag, it is hard to understand this peace.
It would be easy to say that this is a gift from God…and it is, just as the rising of the sun is a gift of God each day. But then, when the weight presses down, what is that? Is that God’s lump of coal? What kind of a gift is that?
God’s gifts are not so simple as that. It is tempting to say that God’s gifts are always available, but we just don’t always accept them, but that seems a bit smug somehow, like putting a finger on the forehead of a drowning man. At the same time I know that there is something true about that – God’s gifts being always here.
David writes in the 139th Psalm that even the darkness is not dark to our creator. He writes that even in death the presence of God cannot be escaped. In the book of Genesis, when Joseph is falsely accused and thrown into prison, the writer states that God was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love. “Well, why didn’t God just break him out of jail?” the cynic or the smarty pants will say.
I find the suggestion that if God existed he would always do everything in his power to stop all evil weaker and weaker as I grow older. Certainly it nags at the back of my mind as I read the news, but it is merely a nuisance to me. While I do not understand why God will at times simply come to dwell with us in the darkness instead of banishing it entirely, I am certain of it. I know it as sure as I know that the sun will rise this morning…later than it does in the summer, but rise it will.
That God comes to sit with us in the darkness is a promise of sorts. It reminds us that there is darkness, and it also reminds us that we will come out of the darkness eventually, even if it may be hard to believe in the moment. We will come out of the darkness, and feel the sunshine again, and it also reminds us that even as we wait for that moment; even as we wait in the darkness, God will be right there with us.
