As I opened the blinds the quarter moon shone clearly. A further glance and sure enough, the stars were shining brightly.
A clear moon and stars in this Pacific Northwest part of the Earth can only mean one thing … the temperatures are dropping.
The house feels the chill this early Sunday morning … yet, I cannot bring myself to turn my light therapy box (a great help these past two dark winters when SAD (seasonal affective disorder, better known as it’s dark outside and I am solar-powered … help!).
The light of the moon and the stars brightens my mood naturally.
Yet, this clear sky, it comes at a cost … it is cold outside. The meteorologists are predicting an arctic airflow coming from the North East … meaning bone-chilling cold as well as winds that deliver a chilly punch.
It reminds me of Ecclesiastes 3. The list of life’s opposite realities. This list of a time to … is a list created by the reality of living in our sin-filled world. This is the list that God did not create, was not the life that He designed, but the reality formed in the pit of sin. He did not create us to die, to war, to weep … yet these are the dark and stormy nights of life as we know it.
Verse 11 of that chapter reminds of his love for humanity,
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart …”
Which reminds me of Augustine’s well-known declaration, “O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
In Longfellow’s poem, The Rainy Day, he describes (so very well … I think he must have lived it) the struggles of the cold, and dark, and dreary (day, how) it rains, and the wind is never weary. The final verse of his poem, though, reminds us of the reality of these dark cloud seasons :
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall …
We may currently live in the dark and cold, but when these cold winds blow in, the moon and stars shine all the brighter … reminders to us of what is to come, of the hope that still exists.
itsawonderfilledlife 