Thoughts on Winter and Christ’s Coming
[Note: I first wrote this a little under a year ago. Posting it because I recently discovered it and it seemed to fit the time of year…consider this a Thoughts From the Bright House.]
This time of year, I am always waiting.
It’s a difficult thing to explain, but it’s probably something many people will understand regardless: Winter feels like winter to me. Culturally, we associate the season with death—which pretty obviously makes sense—and that resonates with me. I am, in a way, less alive January through March, and can feel myself preparing—sinking into hibernation—in December.
It is currently December.
I think this is partially because of the environment: the grass is dead, the trees are bare, and it’s cold (for Tennessee, at least).
Another reason is school. Through the first semester, everything is fine. I don’t like it, but there’s plenty to look forward to, the windows are occasionally open, and the routine provides a sense of security and stability. But by January or February, everything compounds into a feeling of exhaustion; I never sleep enough, wake up every morning to a (frankly rather terrifying) alarm, and have learned to sink into myself, stay silent, and stop trying to…you know…act like I exist. At that point, the routine is less calming and more restrictive. Or infuriating.
Though not everybody has the same lifestyle as me, I have a feeling a lot of people feel this way during the winter season. Somehow, it manages to make our lives both crushingly monotone (brown everywhere, at least where I am), and unbearably frenzied (last-minute Christmas shopping and racing the GPS prediction to reach the home of extended family). And it can’t just happen once and be over. No, it has to come every year. What idiot thought that would be a good idea?
God. That’s the answer: God did.
Christmas comes in the middle of winter to provide some warmth and light in the otherwise unbroken darkness and cold. That’s a pretty easy conclusion to come to, and not too surprising. But there’s something else that takes place during winter (albeit early on), something we, oddly, don’t think to connect to it as often. Advent.
Advent is the time leading up to Christmas, and exists to remind us of the years God’s people spent waiting for His arrival: Jesus’s birth. For centuries before Christ’s coming, the Isrealites received no communication from God.
They were waiting.
Many must have thought that God had abandoned their people, that there was no hope. Even those who believed He had not forsaken them had no way of knowing when another prophet—or the Messiah—would arrive.
But He did.
And without the waiting, the joy of Christ’s coming would not have been so sweet. I don’t claim to know why God took so long before sending His son, but I believe that was part of it. After years and years in the cold of winter, they—we—were finally given the light and warmth of Christ. Later, on the third day (interesting thought: Spring is the third season after summer and plenty), Christ’s followers were freed from their waiting by the light of His resurrection.
Waiting has a place. A purpose. God rewards those who are patient, and He is with us in our waiting, reminding us of His son, and the promises He will never break.
Isaiah 25:9 says, “It will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.’” One day, we will not have to wait any longer. Spring is coming. Green is coming.
Christ is coming.
All will be made new.
