The Wintry Season of Faith

The Winter of the Heart

My Bolivian friends see pictures of the Canadian wintry scenes and comment on ‘How cold it looks!’ They are quite right as wintry blasts assault our exterior selves with nonchalant shrugs and sighs. We bundle up as best we can, but even still the cold penetrates our parkas and the touch of the deep blue reaches deep inside.

But there is a cold even more fierce that we face in recesses of our hearts, seemingly impervious to the Spirit’s delicate winds. The psalmist knew this wintry season of soul (even in a moderate Mediterranean climate):

You have made my days a few handbreaths and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight. Surely everyone stands as a mere breath. Surely everyone goes about like a shadow. Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; they heap up, and do not know who will gather…Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears. For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears. (Psalm 39: 5-6, 12).

Professor Martin Marty has predicted such cold seasons of the heart when he observes that “winter is a season of the heart as much as it is a season in the weather.” He turns to the poet who draws the connection:

Two evils, monstrous either one apart,

Possessed me, and were long and loath at

going;

A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,

And in the wood the furious winter

blowing.

John Crowe Ransom, “Winter Remembered”

Still our loving God speaks to us even in these frosty seasons. The trade winds of grace blow stronger throughout the day and melt our solidified inner states. The encouraging news is that such wintry seasons of faith do not tell the entire story—the sacred spring and verdant summer lie not too far behind.

Yes, it is true that we are ‘passing guests’ on this earthly pilgrimage. But we are also ‘valued guests’ even in the grey, wintry season of faith.