Christmas was less than three weeks ago, and I’m already finding it a little hard to remember. Maybe that’s true for you, too.
The festiveness can easily get replaced with fogginess as we enter the cold, gray days of January — dimming all those bright hopes and sending a chill of realism through our resolutions. ‘Tis the season of surviving, it sometimes feels — that “good news of great joy” only faintly ringing in our ears as we trudge into the next semester, the next project, assignment, quarterly report, the next family crisis or career challenge.
Sounds bleak. But could this icy interval hold more for us than this?
Of course it does, much more if we’ll see it. If we’ll seek it. Beneath the letdowns and the doldrums is an opportunity to learn something we all need — how to have faith.
I’ve always seen this lesson as intentionally baked into this season. In the dead of winter, summer can be difficult to picture. Looking at the leafless trees and bare garden beds, I find myself wondering, “Was everything really ever that green and lush?” It was, and will be again.
Faith that springtime will come reminds me of some other things that are true of our lives, places where we do well to keep such faith.
Relationships can get rocky and require of us an extra measure of patience or candor or boundary-setting. Each of these is demanding and often draining, but such hard work points us reliably toward resolution and even reconciliation. This is faith.
Our sense of accomplishment and even self-worth can falter when we feel we’re not achieving the progress, professional or otherwise, we feel we should. In such moments we must remind ourselves that God loves us completely, and as we rest in Christ we know that no amount of so-called success will cause God to love us more. This is faith.
Tragedy, difficulty and loss enter our lives, hitting us hard, and leaving us with grief, depression or anger. These can overwhelm and paralyze us. This is the time to be honest with God regarding our emotions and to lean on Him. This is certainly faith.
We know that not everything gets resolved this side of eternity. Not every wrong is righted or even every wound completely healed, but strength can spawn from weakness, wisdom from error, and grace from pain.
So, let’s keep our feet walking forward with perseverance and our eyes up watching in hope. Because beneath the blanket of snow are seeds of new growth, and it’s precisely in these downbeats that we can find our rhythm. This is what faith looks like.
If you’re like me, these January days can be reduced to simply looking forward to spring with its light and warmth. But we mustn’t miss the gifts of every season, including life’s winters — times when putting one foot in front of the other can feel like victory and finding true light and warmth in God is life’s actual aim.
Dr. Rob McCord is senior minister of Outlook Christian Church in McCordsville. This weekly column is written by local clergy members.
