This is crazy! We live where snow is pretty rare - but not recently! Today, we're getting the latest in what's been a sudden parade of winter storms. I just went out and measured 9" in our yard - and it's still coming! Why am I singing, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas?" Christmas never looks like this around here! Check the calendar, Weather Guy - it's almost Valentine's Day!
Sure, my friends in places like Chicago and New York are muttering, "You wimp! I'll tell you about winter!" Like Syracuse, for example, where they've had something like 130 inches of snow this winter. I figure I won't be getting any sympathy cards from Syracuse soon.
But here's what's cool. They're talkin' maybe 60 degrees by the weekend! That makes it a lot easier to deal with another day of shoveling, de-icing, tough driving, aborted plans, cancellations. Winter's not going to be forever. Spring is just beyond that pile of snow!
I guess that's what hope is about. Being able to make it through your "winter" because you know there's a "spring" coming. And hopelessness is falling for the lie that it will always be winter...that spring will never come.
I've lived and trudged through long personal winters. I've got a lot of friends who are in a cold, dark season right now. It's easy to start believing that your "winter" is never going to end.
Then along comes God's hopeful promise: "Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning" (Psalm 30:5). There's never been a winter without a spring. There's never been a sunset without a sunrise. There never will be.
Sometimes we extend the dark, cold past by insisting on carrying it into our present. Our past wounds, past failures, past hard feelings. It's been winter so long, we can't even see the spring that's unfolding. That's why God gives us a wakeup call that says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it" (Isaiah 43:18).
One thing we got when we got Jesus was a graduation from "this is all there is" to living against the backdrop of eternity. That's why a battered and bleeding Apostle Paul could say: "We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
Jesus is the Hope of a spring that no tragedy, no disease, no handicap, no sad time can take away. And even in your winter, it can be spring in your soul. So let it snow and freeze all it wants. I've seen God's forecast. Spring is coming!