Trees
The winter seems so long. Naked trees stretching up to a grey sky; nothing but death. But really, they aren't stripped bare until December and begin to show signs of life again in March. Three months- it seems so long.
Trees respond to the light-
The length of the day, the depth of the night.
And how much more so should we?
Could the steadfast nature of a tree
Teach us to wait for our life?
We, too, were designed to wait for the light
And respond with beauty to the long trials of night.
When the darkness presses close,
our eyes lift up to the Lord of hosts
who comes with the dawn
breaking chains and leading us on
into his kingdom.
To tell the story as beautifully as we can-
this is our calling.
For some, a command.
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I wrote this poetic reflection some time ago while I was walking through the park, thinking about hope. Last week, I told you all about my stained sweatshirt and how real, true hope requires us to get a little messy. If we won’t acknowledge both the good and the bad, the light and the darkness in our lives and the lives of those around us, we’ll never learn to really hope in anything at all.
I love winter. I know a fair few people who hate the cold, snow, wind, and ice. I can agree with you on the wind, but that’s about it. Snow makes everything quiet. Cold gives me the opportunity to bundle up in my coziest clothing. Ice encases everything in mystical gems and sparkles in the sunlight. I don’t mind the shorter days and longer nights as much as my friends. Perhaps it’s because I’m prone to melancholy or just because I’m a bit of a contrarian, but I love the winter for its unique beauty.
I learned something else about winter recently that got me thinking. Do you know what Perihelion is? I got an A in Astronomy in college, but I don’t remember learning about this. “Perihelion” is a compound Greek word meaning around (peri) the sun (helios). This word is used in English to refer to the time at which the earth is closest to the sun. The word we use to denote our farthest point from the sun is aphelion. I did some quick research at Space.com and learned some fascinating stuff. You can go there, too, and read all about orbits, ellipses, and the actual center of our solar system. What I want to focus on today has to do with the timing of both perihelion and aphelion. It’s not what you’d expect.
Because our calendars don’t match our solar year precisely, there’s going to be some oddness to the dates I’m about to throw at you. But I want you to pay attention to the timing of the dates, rather than their exactitude. Now, when do you think perihelion takes place? What about aphelion? Given that the sun is our source of heat and light and our experience with heat on Earth, it stands to reason that perihelion would take place in the hottest part of the year, which has the most light. Aphelion would, then, take place in the coldest part of the year with the least light. That’s what I thought, but I didn’t consider that our proximity to the sun has nothing to do with seasons or that everyone on Earth doesn’t experience the same seasons at the same time. One of my friends lives in the southern hemisphere, while I live in the northern. Her summer is my winter and vice-versa. Perihelion and Aphelion take place for the whole planet at the same time and, thus, have no bearing on our seasons.
Perihelion, the time at which planet Earth is closest to the Sun, occurred on January 4 of 2023. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, that’s the dead of winter. The shortest (in terms of daylight) day of the year, the winter solstice, was on December 21. If you live in the northern hemisphere, the Earth is closest to the sun just 14 days after the shortest day of the year.
As I reflect upon these facts, more thoughts arise in my mind. First, “HOW HOT IS THE SUN?!” The fact that it can give me a devastating sunburn in July, during aphelion, makes me wonder. I also feel bad for everyone in the southern hemisphere who has to be closest to the sun during summertime. I hope their sunburns aren’t as bad as mine can be. Second, and more seriously, perspective matters. I often think that, because I’m dealing with difficult circumstances, God must not love me. Because I’m experiencing pain, I must be far away from the source of life, hope, and healing. Do you see the irony?
In the northern hemisphere, we are closest to our source of light, energy, and life during our darkest days. If we were to base our ideas about proximity to the sun on our experience alone, we’d come to the wrong conclusion. Incidentally, it was that kind of thinking that led people to believe that the Earth, not the sun, was the center of the universe. A belief that some held so staunchly that they not only tied their religion to it, but also punished scientists and mathematicians for daring to contradict them. (Galileo was sentenced to house arrest until his death for “heresy” regarding the earth, the sun, and the solar system.)
Our perspective matters for more reasons than scientific accuracy, though. If I believe that, because my life is hard, God does not love me, then I’m going to start to do a few things. First, I may ask why he doesn’t love me. And, because of my personality and particular struggles with the darkness, I’m going to conclude that if I do enough good/right things, try hard enough, and punish my shortcomings more severely, then he will love me. In short, I’ll blame myself for my difficult circumstances and set out on a quest to control the outcome of my life. This isn’t a totally bad idea, which is why it’s a horrible lie. The truth is, my difficult circumstances may be my fault. Everyone causes themselves some measure of pain and distress due to our general inability to get things right. But that’s only part of the truth.
It’s not my fault if someone punches me in the face. I may have some responsibility depending on the circumstances, but the other person bears the blame, too. And then there are cases of abuse in which the victim bears none of the blame. But we can’t just stop there. We experience difficulty because things grow old, break, and/or die. It’s not your fault if you were born with physical limitations or infirmities that prevent you from navigating the world like others around you. It’s just the way that it is. (As a side note, people used to believe that, if you were born with a physical or mental ailment, it was your or your parents’ fault. Jesus’s disciples ask him in John 9 if a man who was born blind was at fault or his parents. Our issues with perspective run as far back as we can account.)
Difficult circumstances, sin, darkness, whatever you want to call them, have multiple causes. Maybe you did something foolish. Perhaps someone else did. Or, and this is almost always part of the answer, we live in a world that is less than it was made to be and, thus, nothing works as it should. If we don’t understand this truth, then we will always have our perspectives askew. We’ll always misjudge our distance from the sun.
Could it be that, in our darkest nights, we are not further from God, but nearer? Could it be that our proximity to him has nothing to do with our circumstances or even our posture towards him, but rather, his posture towards us? Even in your brightest and most joyful days, he is nearer than you think. How much more so in the dark of night or dead of winter?
Another reason that I love winter so much is that it provides me an opportunity to hope for spring. Last week I talked about my battle for hope because I’m so prone to despair. I love winter because the darkness and the cold help me welcome the warmth. I don’t generally enjoy being hot, but I actually start to look forward to warmer weather towards the end of winter. The lack of apparent life during the cold months also makes me keenly aware when things begin to stir. I walk around the woods and my own backyard like a sleuth hot on the trail of my quarry. I stare at the ground where I know the flowers will come up watching for the first sign of their tender leaves. I pay attention to the tips of the trees to see the leaves just beginning to come out and unfurl. And it’s only because of my perspective, my attention to these details, that I find hope rather than despair in the shortest days of the year.
The trees appear dead in the winter, but what if it was then that they were doing their most important work? What if it was when there appeared to be nothing at all going on that new life was being prepared? What if the outward signs of life, growth, and beauty weren’t the beginning of things, but the end?
The long, dark days, both figuratively and literally, have something to teach us. There is growth happening in the darkest nights of the winter and in the darkest nights of your soul. The question that you have to answer is not, “Why is it so dark?”, but “How will I look for hope and light in the midst of it?”