In the bleak midwinter

As the temperature plummets and the earliest freeze warning, that I can remember, wraps its icey fingers around our hearts, I am taken back to that first day of November when Margaret and me were just entering our third month of marital bliss. Well, it was bliss for me, I am not sure what it was for Margaret considering the level of immaturity that she had to deal with in her young naïve, self-centered husband. Our 45-years of marriage is a testimony to her level of forgiveness and tolerance of my painful stupidty. Anyway, that is a subject matter for another blog and beside the point in what I am trying to say today.

On that first day of November, 1965 a freaky winter storm blew through Nashville dumping a heavy, wet snow on the city. It caught the trees still wearing their fall foliage in splended display. It was my first snow storm that I could remember because my formative years in Cleveland had long been lost and it was beautiful. What a thrilling experience. It brought out the kid in all of us. Harry, who would later become a Rhodes scholar, was running around campus in his bathing suit and a pair of sneakers having a ball. He was soon joined by some other slightly insane students in their bathing suits. The president of our college stood off in the near distance laughing at the antics of his beloved “children”. And, as it could be expected, we made the front page of the newspaper with our large snow sculpture of the character Kanga from “Winnie the Pooh” – the drama department’s fall production that year.

When unusal and/or different occurances take place I normally associate them with music of some sort. And so, with the temperature low and the freeze warning in effect while we attempt to finish out our Christmas preparations I think of a little used Christmas carol, “In the bleak midwinter”:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign;
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for him, whom Cherubim worship night and day
A breast full of milk and a manger full of hay.
Enough for him, whom angels fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

When our souls are gripped by the bleakness of life; when our lives seem meaningless and empty; when our hearts have grown cold for the lack of an embrace; when our vision has dulled to hope and possibilities; when our future seems miserable because it has been mired in the muck of bad decisions; when it takes all of our strength and fortitude to simply get through another day … in the bleak midwinter of our existence, God comes when least expected in a surprisingly simple way … our world is turned upside down … our lives are forever transformed … we mount up on eagle’s wings … and the truth of the Bethlehem child born to two very young teenagers thousands of years ago becomes a pivotal point for us once again ... and the celebration of Christmas, a celebration of life, of hope, of possibility, of promise, of God’s grace and forgiveness takes on new meaning for each of us even when the world is in the grips of the bleakness of a midwinter’s storm.

Quote for today: There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them. ~Clare Boothe Luce