An Advent Coming

From sunrise to sunset and beyond, a thick gray blanket of clouds has covered this place called home.  Stretching from east to west and north to south not a single ray of sunshine has penetrated the gray thickness  and all the sounds under it have been amplified as they bounce between heaven and earth through the damp air.  The neighbor's cows some two farms over sound like they are huddled in the back yard.  For those who can find no beauty in gray, it has surely been a horrible day. 

 

The rest of the creation seemed to reflect the gray mood of the heavens.  Pecan trees which earlier were heavy with green foliage and nuts now stand like stark naked skeletons against the sky.  The pasture and hay fields once green are now rusty brown.   Some speak of winter as being a season when everything is dead.  The cold gray days of winter are even often used as a metaphor for death.  But, to look around with a memory of how things were and a hope for how things will be is to realize that the creation is not in some death-like state, but instead is in a state of resting. 

If we could give human characteristics to things like trees and fields we would surely hear them saying that they are not dead but waiting with hope for a life giving surge to push forth from the dirt into their roots to give them life again.  Surely, such would be the expectation of these brown fields and bare trees.  And, is it not like this for all of us? Are we not waiting for some life giving power to touch the roots of our life so that we might once again know the life intended for us by the Creator of grass and tree and human beings?  Just maybe Advent came in its fullness today even as the earth was shrouded in a kind of deep gray darkness.