It is the morning of February 1, 2023. And it is cold, not really cold, but cold enough to get my attention. The temp is just south of the freezing mark.
I sit in my “pondering” chair in our bonus room “study” over the garage. (I am not sure what makes this room a “bonus.” It was in the original plan and cost as much as the rest of the house.) There is a large arched window within reach of my right hand. Unfortunately, it is close enough that I cannot help but feel the cold outside oozing in through the double-pane glass to touch me.
Over the last twenty-four hours, a layer of ice has been evenly distributed over everything exposed to the winter harshness. The view is pretty, and it is equally eerie. The loosed end of a spiderweb in the window corner tells me that the outside air is moving. Yet, nothing else yields to its pushing. Other than a black cat that lives with the neighbors and a gray cat that appears to be passing through, absolutely nothing is moving. The outside is stiff with the artic visit.
And it is silent! No sounds come from the surrounding woods. No transportation sound from the street below our hill. Nothing. There is no sound but the atoms of air bashing into my eardrums. (Having said that, I just heard a train announcing a cautionary warning while passing downtown Greenbrier.)
Summer heat is never silent, even when the air is too heavy to move. This icy silence introduced itself to me while serving in the military. My assignment was just outside Anchorage, Alaska. My work there took me back and forth between Anchorage and Fairbanks. It gets cold in Anchorage. It gets frigid in Fairbanks.
While summer heat seems to bear down from above, oppressing all living things. Cold appears to rise from beneath my shoes, pulling me into a dark cavern of stillness. Heat makes me not want to move. Cold makes it hard to move. So my preference is cold over heat. Maybe when my joints are older, I may change my mind.
Cold air is clear air. All the moisture in hot air forms a light-bending smog. The further you try to see, the thicker the heated goop gets. In the cold, all the moisture turns to ice crystals and falls to the ground or cleans any object it touches.
The winter night sky over in the fridged parts of the world banishes with stary brilliance. The colder it gets, the more transparent the air becomes. And silence always accompanies the cold. I walked in a night that stabbed my lungs with minus forty-two degrees below zero. (This a without any wind chill adjustment.) I have been in the “wild” during cold nights when sound waves fall to the ground in reverent awe. And I want to join them in their worship, but not on the ground.
The world we are privileged to live in is filled with wonder. This is so because its Creator is the source and destination of all things awe-inspiring. This natural wonder may not cause a sense of awe in every person, yet human skepticism of all things Divine does not diminish the magnificence of what our five senses behold. And that is just the way grace is. Human evaluation of the love of God in action cannot alter the quantity or the quality of its flow.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands.
2 Day after day, they pour out speech;
night after night, they communicate knowledge.[a]
3 There is no speech; there are no words;
their voice is not heard.
4 Their message[b] has gone out to the whole earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens, he has pitched a tent for the sun. (Psalm 19:1-4 CSB)
Photo – Taken at the pond behind our house.
Baldwin Heirlooms 