Train of Thought

The Week December 24-30, 2012

It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. Proverbs 25.2

Something in my soul resonates powerfully with these cold, gray, winter mornings. And when we get one on Christmas Day, well, that’s about as good as it gets.

The world may be upside-down and circling wildly away from the wisdom of God, but one beautiful Christmas morning like we had this year is surely a portent of better days to come. The angels sang God’s glory through the beauty of the creation this Christmas morning. To catch but a glimpse of the glory of God concealed in the quiet, snow-draped trees and yards validates the life of faith and encourages each next step – whether impossible, unlikely, or seemingly insignificant – toward the precious and very great promises of God. 

The Christmas season, for all its hectic bustling about, invites resting in the Lord, enjoying the fact of His having come among us and waiting on Him toward the New Year and whatever challenges or stimulations to greater creativity and fruitfulness it may present. Christmas heralds the Kingdom and reminds us that God loves poor sinners, enslaved to sin, enough to send His Son for our redemption.

What does the New Year hold in store? Will we worship Christ like our fathers did, or will we take our liturgical cues from pop culture and felt needs? Will we, like Patrick, follow the Spirit and stay the course of our calling in The Lord? Will we resist everything that seeks to distract us from the Lord and our calling to seek His Kingdom? Will we search out soul friends as faithful traveling companions in our journey of faith, and will we walk the path of love for God and neighbor, according to the soul-civilizing power of God’s Law, with new vigor and resolve?

As pastors are unwise in using any but God’s criteria to assess the effectiveness of their ministries, so we would be remiss to take anything other than His Word and promises as the foundation for our New Year’s plans and resolutions. Let us seek the Lord according to the Biblical framework for prayer – to the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit – and offer ourselves anew to the only work that produces truly lasting fruit. The gray days of winter cannot obscure the reality of God’s glory, or of the new day His Son has brought to the world.

We only have to be patient and wait upon the Lord, looking His Word and promises, resting in His Spirit, and rejoicing in His Son and King.

These Gray Days

These gray days have a beauty all their own.
The trees, stripped bare, stand like a Giacometti
creation on a Cristo scale. The steady,
tormenting winds that make them creak and groan
compose a mournful oratorio
of longing and lament, a requiem
or dirge for some lost love, a baleful hymn.
They supplicate an unseen Power they know
will in good time full restoration bring.
For now, however, witness to a heady
transcendence, all creation, great and petty
alike, their wintry lamentations sing.
  Look through the gray, the death-like cold, and see,
  if but in prospect, what must shortly be.

T. M. Moore, Principal
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