‘How are you?’ I asked one of the young mums at the school gates. She replied glumly “I’ve got the February blues”. It’s certainly that time of year – daylight hours are shorter and the sparkle of Christmas and holidays seem long past. At these times it’s good to have something to look forward to, something that helps keep us positive during the doldrums of Winter. Perhaps unsurprisingly this is the time of year that many people book their holidays.
However, in our eagerness to spring forward it’s easy to overlook the little prompts the seasons themselves contain; daily reminders in nature that life is full of new beginnings and eternal promise. Winter contains the seeds of Spring and Summer, unseen but present nevertheless just below the surface. It prompts us to consider how nature is God’s gift to us, to be cherished, but also that the new beginnings we see in nature echo the new beginning Christ offers to each of us when we turn to him in penitence and faith. George Herbert’s Poem ‘the Flower’, below, captures these sentiments. And if you want to beat the February blues, why not join us in church? All are welcome, and the times and locations are in this magazine.
The Flower, by George Herbert, 1633
How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
Rev’d Andrew Hiscox