Midday Meditation: Winter in all of Our Lives There is a winter in all of our lives, a chill and darkness that makes us yearn for days that have gone or put our hope in days yet to be. Father God, you created seasons for a purpose. Spring is full of expectation buds breaking frosts abating and an awakening of creation before the first days of summer. Now the sun gives warmth and comfort to our lives reviving aching joints bringing colour, new life and crops to fruiting. Autumn gives nature space to lean back, relax and enjoy the fruits of its labour mellow colours in sky and landscape as the earth prepares to rest. Then winter, cold and bare as nature takes stock rests, unwinds, sleeps until the time is right. An endless cycle and yet a perfect model. We need a winter in our lives a time of rest, a time to stand still a time to reacquaint ourselves with the faith in which we live. It is only then that we can draw strength from the one in whom we are rooted take time to grow and rise through the darkness into the warm glow of your springtime to blossom and flourish bring colour and vitality into this world your garden. Thank you Father for the seasons of our lives. - Author Unknown (from Jesuit Resource) Consider what you need winter for *this* year. What have the past seasons held, that needed rest and recovery, a dormancy of waiting and lying fallow? If you're in a place of "but it's been long enough", what does more rest, more winter feel like? What might more winter invite you into?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2023-02-27 18:30:42 UTC