I don't think I can recall the last time I saw the sun.
I know it was sometime in the past week. Or has it been two? I honestly can't recall its last appearance. My memory is as cloudy as this vintage November weather. Grey skies, drizzling rain, ice-cold chill in the air.¹
I love the changing seasons, but I don't love November.
Imagine if you were observing the change of seasons for the first time, with no concept of what was happening. What would you think? As the days got shorter and shorter, you'd probably start to wonder: will the sun ever come back again? Is this the end of the world? Is light soon to be forever gone? Should I buy stock in a candle-making company?²
Now think of that day - the solstice, the shortest day in the year - when the darkness stopped advancing. You measure the minutes, and soon realize that the light is returning. Days lengthen, winter eventually releases its icy grip on the world, and you rejoice in the return of the light.
When you see enough seasons come and go, you start to recognize a pattern: there are times of darkness, and times of light. One follows another. Seasons change, years pass by, but the pattern holds true: light follows darkness. Sometimes the winters are particularly cruel and dark, but summer always - eventually - comes.
Life has more than one kind of season. Years go by, and you notice patterns similar to those of the seasons: times of darkness, followed by times of light. You move from doubt, to despair, to hope, to joy. Sometimes the seasons are out of proportion, but there is a certain rhythm which we can find comfort in. With enough perspective, you start to realize that darkness is always followed - eventually - by light.
I was reading from Psalms 42 and 43 with a friend earlier this week, and I was struck once again by the refrain that the writer David repeats three times over those two chapters:
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God ³
I don't think I have it in me to be truly thankful for grim November weather. Neither do I have the capacity to give thanks for difficulties and hardships in the midst of them. Those one-degree days without a drop of sunshine in them, and those times when nothing makes sense and God himself seems to have left you high and dry; those are hard, if not downright impossible, to be thankful for.
But the seasons always change.
I put my hope in God, not because I can always praise him in the dark. I put my hope in him because I know the light is always just around the corner, because I have hope that one day I will yet - future tense - praise him. I've seen enough seasons change to have faith that the light will eventually break through, and that this dismal November weather will soon be a thing of the past. And I also know that in times of sunlight and joy, it's worth pausing to remember: this won't last. I need to soak up every minute of this, and do whatever it takes to remember the summer weather while it lasts.⁴
Even when one's soul is being blessed with summer weather, though, this dreary November drizzle is still pretty tough to appreciate.
²You'd probably be better off just buying some candles.
³Psalms 42:5, 42:11, and 43:5
⁴For the record, I love winter as a season of the year; I do not enjoy it as a season of the soul.
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