Devotions from Mark Buchanan’s book, Spiritual Rhythm

The season of winter is bleak, cold, dark and fruitless. It is a time of inactivity, more night than day and never seems to end. We would like to run from it, disavow it, or deny it.  Sometimes it feels like it is our personal failure, something we have caused. But it is a season and there’s no preventing of it.  Most people around us don’t help us and may give us pep talks and that make us feel even more alone. Things we found stimulating or pleasurable no longer have meaning for us, God seems far away or too near- aloof in his heaven and we feel He is hidden.  Our hearts may feel closed up and our dreams buried. It is different than depression as depression is triggered mostly by something internal whereas winter is triggered mostly by circumstances. ( In the author’s case it was the death of his assistant pastor). .” But every heartache and hardship and the loneliness such things bring, has a back door.  They allow us entry into a communion with Christ we don’t usually experience in our days of ease and song. Most of us have had our deepest encounters with Christ not on mountaintops but in the valley floors.” More tomorrow on Winter..