Embracing our Winter Seasons

Coming from Australia, summer was my favourite season. I still love summer, but there is something about the winter season that refreshes my heart.

Fall is here now, and winter is coming fast.

Here in Nth California, the trees are starting to look stark, the air is crisp, and the landscape looks kind of naked, stripped bare, for everyone to see. The wind whips through the uncovered branches and the rain washes all the leaves and dross away.

Winter for all of us can bring clarity and freshness of vision. Just like we can see further through the trees, now without their leaves. There is a restored ability to see further than before if we’re willing to look. There is a vulnerability and authenticity that the winter season brings to our lives if we allow it.

A stripping away of all the things we cover ourselves with.

Maybe it’s busyness or the leaves of protection from guilt or shame. Maybe it’s lies that we are partnering with that are stopping us from stepping into our destinies. Lies like ‘I’m not good enough, smart enough, old enough, young enough….’ Winter is the time when we can allow the wind of the spirit to strip away all those things that encumber us. Will we feel naked? Uncovered? Vulnerable? Perhaps, for a while…..

But then, the snow comes! Falling from the sky like floating white slivers of coconut. I can almost imagine God leaning over with his giant sifter full of icing sugar deciding where He is going to sift and shake that sweet white icing next. There are two things I love about snow. The first is its beauty. No one can deny how magnificent and clean fresh snow looks. It’s like a freshly laundered blanket that has been shaken out and laid over a giant bed. But the thing I love most is the silence. If you listen really really carefully you can hear a very quiet gentle swish as the snow is falling, and above that – nothing. Not a bird, not a movement, not a sound; resembling an enormous insulated bubble of silence.

It’s in these ‘silent moments’ that we hear the still small voice of our Father. His words are like those snowflakes; quiet and gentle and you have to lean in to hear Him. His words are like that freshly laundered blanket, covering us, making us feel safe and warm and clean. His words are reminding us of who we really are without all the coverings of

The dry dead leaves and the lies that we are believing. We are finally able to see further than we ever have before.

For years I have heard different people speak of the ‘winter seasons’ in our lives as being a negative, hard and lonely season. One that we push through looking toward ‘Spring’ where new things come forth and new growth and opportunities burst through. But this is not necessarily true.

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Coming from a country that doesn’t really have a ‘winter’, not compared to other countries in the world. I never realized that many people close down their businesses, shut in their animals and utilize winter as a time of rest and reconstruction pausing for the springtime to arrive. They use this time to do maintenance on their properties and businesses, spend time with family and prepare for the seasons to come.

Winter brings opportunities for both rest and restoration. When we intentionally position ourselves with expectation and trust Him that He will partner with us to strip us bare and then re-cover us with His love and His promises. Only then are we prepared to enter into the next season of our lives. And Spring will come!

Ecclesiastes 3

For everything, there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.

Let’s embrace our winter seasons, trusting God and His promises, that He knows the bigger picture from beginning to end. Let’s steward what He has given us now, and remember that there is a time for everything.

In the meantime, it’s up to us to recognize what season we are in and embrace it!