Tag: winter

When Temporary Lasts a Long Time

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It is cold and I am whiny about the cold.

It’s the the kind of wet and gray cold that seeps into your bones and leaves you chilly despite fuzzy socks, layers of clothing, soft blankets, and hot tea.

Maybe it’s less about the thermometer and more about the bitterness of the wind and the colorless sky that’s convinced me to abandon my afternoon walk and retreat inside.

There are certainly people and places a whole lot colder than I am. Our temps outside haven’t even dipped below freezing and we’ve not seen any snow. So I know there’s nothing really to complain about and I know that winter has barely started here and that colder days are still to come.

This week, though, as this Virginia girl has felt a little overwhelmed by winter, I received my first seed catalogue from our local nursery.

There’s hope!

Spring, my friends, is coming.

This is my favorite and most necessary reminder each year in January. The bulbs will begin shooting green up through the soil soon. Tulips and daffodils will bloom in just a few weeks. There will be color and sun and warmth and the best of all, new and renewed life.

On Sunday, I chatted with a friend about our concerns for kids and teens during this pandemic and how many teens we personally know who have begun taking medication for depression. We mourned all this has cost them and how many of them are beginning to feel hopeless.

I told her the same thing I’ve been saying to my kids for about ten months, “we’ll be okay.” All this is temporary sorrow and temporary loss. We mourn, but we rest in God’s faithfulness and pray for those around us fighting much harder situations.

The truth is, though, this temporary sure is lasting a long time.

In fact, ten months of temporary is starting to feel rather permanent.

Paul wrote:

For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal

(2 Cor 4:17-18 CSB)

Maybe one of the transformations happening in me in this long stretch of temporary and this seemingly endless “momentary light affliction” is that this life feels less satisfying and more uncomfortable.

It’s hard to long for the eternal weight of glory when life down here feels pretty cozy and when the joys of this life satisfy all of the longings in my soul.

But we’re meant to long for more than that.

Ecclesiastes says:

 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. 

Ecclesiastes 3:11 NKJV

All of this winter discontent and frustration with temporary affliction is stirring up the eternity God has placed in my heart. I want to see His beautiful finished work. I want to see His glory and the fulfillment of His promises.

I want to hear His declaration, “It is finished” and see how He is making everything new.

And this longing for eternity is God-designed so that I’m drawn to Him and so that I seek His presence continually and relentlessly.

It’s a sacred and holy restlessness, a discontent because nothing here can ever satisfy and I can truly only be content in Him.

In the same way, the knowledge that spring is promised and assured compels us to push through winter. This cold dormancy and this grayness will not last forever, so we don’t settle here.

Instead, we look beyond because God will bring us to something far more beautiful and glory-filled than we could imagine.

Here, though, in the middle of this long stretch of temporary, this “momentary light affliction,” in this cold, gray winter, I do something more than look forward to the better that’s coming.

The Psalmist wrote:

Be a rock of refuge for me,
where I can always go.
Give the command to save me,
for you are my rock and fortress.

Psalm 71:3 CSB

Our afflictions are tempory, but our God is constant. He is faithful. He does not abandon us in the middle of sorrow.

He is a rock of refuge “where I can always go.” So, even when the temporary drags on and deliverance delays….I go over and over, relentlessly, continually, regularly, day-in and day-out, minute-by-minute straight to Jesus and take refuge in Him.

Bible Verses About Snow

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 verses-about-snow

  • Psalm 51:7 NASB
    Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
    Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
  • Psalm 147:16-18 NASB
    He gives snow like wool;
    He scatters the frost like ashes.
    He casts forth His ice as fragments;
    Who can stand before His cold?
    He sends forth His word and melts them;
    He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow.
  • Psalm 148:7-8 NASB
    Praise the Lord from the earth,
    Sea monsters and all deeps;
    Fire and hail, snow and clouds;
    Stormy wind, fulfilling His word
  • Proverbs 25:13 NASB
    Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest
    Is a faithful messenger to those who send him,
    For he refreshes the soul of his masters.
  • Proverbs 31:21 NASB
    She is not afraid of the snow for her household,
    For all her household are clothed with scarlet.
  • Isaiah 1:18 NASB
    “Come now, and let us reason together,”
    Says the Lord,
    “Though your sins are as scarlet,
    They will be as white as snow;
    Though they are red like crimson,
    They will be like wool.
  • Isaiah 55:10-11 NASB
    For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
    And do not return there without watering the earth
    And making it bear and sprout,
    And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
     So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
    It will not return to Me empty,
    Without accomplishing what I desire,
    And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.
  • Lamentations 4:7 NASB
    Her consecrated ones were purer than snow,
    They were whiter than milk;
    They were more ruddy in body than corals,
    Their polishing was like lapis lazuli.
  • Daniel 7:9 NASB
    “I kept looking
    Until thrones were set up,
    And the Ancient of Days took His seat;
    His vesture was like white snow
    And the hair of His head like pure wool.
    His throne was ablaze with flames,
    Its wheels were a burning fire.
  • Revelation 1:14 NASB
    His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire.