Exulting in Monotony

For those of us in the cold-weather states, and even for many of you in the traditionally warm-weather areas of the United States, this winter has been especially bad. Waking up in the morning to bone-chilling cold and a nice gray color to the skies at all times is at best disheartening and at worst devastating. The human heart longs for hope, for joy, for light; sometimes the winter makes it difficult to find those things.

That, I think, is where we most need to rely on God’s faithfulness. In the dreariness of a cold winter morning, when getting out of bed seems like the most difficult task in the world (maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think it is), we ought to remember God’s constant love and care for His creation. Venture, if you will, into the mind of G.K. Chesterton with me for a moment:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

This Chesterton quote, from his book Orthodoxy, where he is as brilliant as ever, is for me a light when the dreariness of winter has set in. We wait for Spring to come as if it is a necessity that it eventually will; maybe God does not. We hope for sunshine as if it is a random occurence of nature when the sun comes out; for God it may not be random. When we experience the dead of winter, we feel as though life has almost ended, and yet it seems that God may just be waiting with the anticipation and joy of a child, prepared to say “do it again” and bring new life out of the death of winter.

If you’re like me, winter is fun for a while. Snow can be cool, the cold isn’t that big of a deal, and Christmas is especially exciting. Then, if you’re also like me, the novelty of winter wears off after a while and it begins to drag on as we simply wait for it to be over. Every time the snow falls, we wonder when it will finally be over. Maybe – just maybe – our Father in heaven is looking down at the snowfall every time with the joy of a child, never tiring of the beauty of snow and never losing the novelty we had the first time we experience a fresh coat of snow. There is a good chance that every time we bundle up to go out into the frigid temperatures the Lord is not asking us just to get through, but to embrace life as an adventure as we might have when we are a child, “for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

Understand that I, like many of you, am excited for the days when winter fades into spring and I can be out playing golf. I simply think, though, that my Heavenly Father and yours might be asking me to savor every moment with the innocence of a child and to thank Him for each new day as if it was my first.