Cold (in more ways than one)!

The winter wind had sharp edges, just like the prongs on the old barbed wire fence.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

The blue overcast sky mimicked the hardness of the landscape.

 

I have an early winter cold, likely a virus. And it's clinging to me as tenaciously as the ice crystals cling to the wheat that pokes through the frozen ground like soldiers peering out of a foxhole.

Taken Sunday, December 8, 2013

It paints the world in black and white, even without changing the photo editing setting.

Still, there's beauty in the cold, as wheat drill tracks make an abstract painting as the icy pellets settle in the grooves. Well, there may be beauty in one variety of the cold. (I'm not finding much beauty in a hoarse voice and lethargic body, but there are much, much worse things, I know. It definitely doesn't fit into my getting-ready-for-Christmas schedule. (I still don't have my tree up, by the way.)

But maybe it's a good lesson. Advent is a time of waiting.

Wesley Towers Nativity, Hutchinson, KS

It's finding the Christ Child in the midst of the cold (literally and figuratively.)

It's about finding Him in "lonely exile" created by not feeling your best ... or the loss of a loved one during the time when everyone else is celebrating ... or anything else that makes your heart feel cold during what's advertised to be the "hap-happiest time of the year."

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

And ransom captive, Israel.

That mourns in lonely exile here.

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! 

Emmanuel shall come to me, O Israel!

O come, thou day-spring come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death's dark shadows put to flight

Rejoice rejoice
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!