new church life: march / april 2014
Life Lines
winter of our discontent
Folks throughout much of the United States and Canada suffered through a
hard winter, with a relentless succession of storms and the prolonged bonechilling cold of an “Arctic vortex”.
Olivet Church members in Toronto, Canada, celebrated a frigid, dark
Christmas as a week-long power outage doused holiday lights – but not
holiday spirit – across a wide region. Much of Bryn Athyn lost power in singledigit temperatures for four days or more in early February. It helped us all
appreciate the ruggedness of ancestors who knew nothing of the comforts of
electric lights, central heating and indoor plumbing that we so take for granted.
By the time you are reading this the worst of the winter is just a repressed
memory, overtaken by the coming of spring. But while it lasted, it was a grim
experience.
With other “snow birds,” my wife and I escaped in the midst of the misery
for a respite week of Florida sunshine at the Boynton Beach Retreat, where the
locals were also complaining of the cold – 60-70 degrees!
One of the presenters, the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Rose, talked in part about
the Acts and Epistles, and how we should pay more attention to them in the
Church.
Well, I did my part. What came to mind immediately was this alluring
promise from the Song of Solomon 2: 11,12:
“For lo, the winter is past,
The rain [snow!] is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds has come,
And the voice of the turtle
Is heard in the land.”
I have no idea what “the voice of the turtle” sounds like, but if it is anything
like the spring peepers chirping that “the winter is past” and spring is finally
here, it’s the sweetest song many of us will ever hear.
(BMH)
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