The Deep Freeze

Have you ever noticed that when you are coming into the heart of the cold of winter. The time when it freezes everything solid, that it freezes the ground so cold and hard that it looks smooth and impenetrable? A freeze so cold and forebearing that you could never imagine that life would again push through it and the hope of spring is forever away. Then you come to a point every winter where the cold seems to surrender to the cries of nature and finally gives in to a small thaw. Just enough of a thaw to make mud. The kind of mud that slips off the frozen depths below it. A thaw that puts you in mind of the coming spring. Lets you know of the coming warmth and the hope of new growth as well as the beauty of blossoms, the greenest greens of the entire year, colors so vibrant they take your breath away!

And then.....it freezes again! But this time, the freeze leaves gaps in the defrosted and refrozen earth. Gaps that hold ice crystals and air. A freeze that traps motion so that when the final defrost in the spring actually happens, nature can pick up right from where it left off. Withour those gaps in the ground, how would the crocus and the daffodils be able to penetrate their frozen beds?

God just amazes me. He does the same thing with our lives. Freezes us and waits for us to wake up before we pick up and go again. Sometimes the spring rains have to change our whole landscape with an avalanche of rain or an ice storm that kills off all the imperfections that were starting to take over our lives. We always assimilate to the potter with the clay but the winter freeze and thaw has the same affect. Think about what is frozen in your life today and where the gaps of air and ice crystals are that He is getting ready to have burst forth with wonder!