There’s ice every where I look today, but it wasn’t always that way.
As a matter of fact, just yesterday I woke to palm trees and sunshine. For two weeks now, I’ve sought air conditioning and shorts while my neighbors back home bundled to the teeth and dug for hours in repeated deposits of deep, heavy snow. While I was floating with my niece in my parents’ pool, people back home braced for the storms that headed their way.
However.
My place in the sun was not a permanent one. It ended when I got on a plane yesterday and, a mere two hours and thirty minutes later, give or take time to check luggage, moved from a bright, heated place to a cold, overcast one. Philadelphia vegetation, stiff and frozen, replaced the West Palm Beach blooms I’d gotten used to. I could see my breath as I waited for the train and had to watch my step as I climbed the side steps to my house.
However.
It won’t always be this way, either. The time will come when I will be warm again. It may be here in my hometown, when spring returns and summer follows that, or it may be there when I visit my parents again. But one way or another, I know I will not always be cold.
Don’t you think life is like that? When we call to mind the big picture, it helps us in the here and now. Memories of blue skies and warmth temper our present cold distress. A lot can happen in two hours and thirty minutes, with or without the luggage. Knowing God has brought me through repeated seasons of ice and thaw helps me have perspective on today’s reality.
