Winter

I've recently made a big deal out of not being a fan of winter. I love the heat of summer. I love hanging out near water on a hot, sweltering day.

But lately I've come to see this season in a different light. The starkness of winter reveals a hidden beauty. The skeleton shows. The colorful adornment is gone.

Is it possibly the same as we enter our winter years? Beauty emerges. Not the beauty of this world. But the beauty of the world to come. Those with eyes will see it. Those enmeshed in this world will be blind to it. They need the outward adornment. They live for beautiful clothes, beautiful bodies, beautiful skin.

Weaknesses are often exposed late in life. That sounds awful but what’s worse is weaknesses that are hidden. In the light, they can be seen and forgiven.

In 2018 and 2019 I watched my parents die. I wasn't there at the moment of death but I was with them as they wound down their last days here on earth. They were beautiful! Weaknesses were revealed. But it didn't matter. I loved them even more. I felt as if I was in the presence of someone who was shedding all of the outward adornment and about to step into glory.

It's as if God is stripping away everything that's not necessary, down to the very essence of an individual while at the same time getting them ready to be the glorious beings He created them to be.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

“But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’” (1 Corinthians 2:9)