In the Bleak Midwinter

It’s February in the Cariboo. Bleak midwinter—earth like iron, water like stone, snow on snow; cold, howling drifts of the stuff. For those of us who live anywhere north of the 52nd parallel, ice – out isn’t for at least another couple of months, for many of us even longer. As I look out on the wind devils sculpting the snowdrifts on Lac La Hache and try to come up with a reason not to go out into the icy moaning, somehow my mind is dragged back eons ago, to a seeming insignificant conversation late last summer.
“What are you doing with that poor rose bush, hon, trying to bury it?” I asked.
“No, I came to save Alexander Mackenzie, not to bury him,” Linda said. She smiled slightly, stood up straight and pushed a fist into the small of her back, wincing from the chronic pain that is the remnant of a horse incident from her youth.
“Well, it looks to me like you’re trying to torture it by hacking and burying,” I said. “And it looks so green, healthy and full of blooms, too.”
“I do this every year in late summer,” Linda replied. “I prune all my rose bushes hard and early so that the cuts on the stems won’t be exposed to the winter frost until they are well healed. Then, I heap up the soil to bury the root union, water a little bit and a tad later I add mulch to bury the rose even more. We can only grow the hardiest roses this far north and even then we have to take special early precautions to prepare them for winter.”
“You would think roses with names like Alexander Mackenzie, Henry Kelsey, David Thompson and the rest, would have the wherewithal to thrive in a Canadian winter without any special preparation at all,” I commented. And then, with the attention span of a gnat, my mind took a sharp left turn into a well – known Stan Rogers tune about explorers and northwest passages and such. I launched into it with gusto as I continued to work.
Linda just smiled, stooped again and continued to prepare her roses. She said, more to herself than to me because she knew I had moved on, “Some say the Explorer Roses don’t need any special preparation for winter. But I know different, especially when they have to survive the howling winter wind coming off of Lac La Hache.”
That conversation really didn’t mean very much to me in the brightness and warmth of late summer. But now that we are locked in a bleak midwinter storm and I look out on Linda’s rose garden, or at least the snowdrift where it used to be, new questions about God and me are beginning to bloom. In this wicked winter wind, Linda’s whole late – summer rose routine is beginning to wax metaphorically for me. Ruthless pruning, burying and mulching in the goodtime warmth and brightness of late summer seems like a harsh way to prepare for long – away winter. The timing seems off if nothing else.
Why do it when the foliage is still dark and green and the bloom is still lush on the cane? Why not wait until the leaves and flowers have dropped and the canes are seemingly dead anyway, like in late fall or early winter? But Linda has learned the hard way; this far north, if you want your roses to thrive through a bleak midwinter, hard preparation must be done in the easy warmth of late summer.
So here is the God question that has blown in on me with this February storm: Does God ever do anything in life’s easy goodtime to prepare me for the coming bleak midwinter storms? I ask the question metaphorically, of course. And I have to confess, I shudder in asking it. It seems almost masochistic to even consider such a question. But I am pondering Jesus saying to his disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. ” (John 15:1 – 2)
I have never noticed it before, but the picture here is compelling. I am a disciple of Christ, fully grafted into “The Vine.” I am in the middle of the goodtime warmth of bearing much fruit. I want to be allowed to bear my fruit and to celebrate and to enjoy; and then bam, I am pruned? Can’t the pruning wait until my fruit bearing time is over, until the easy goodtime warmth of fruit bearing is finished? Maybe I am wrong, but I see an awful parallel with the book of Job here. Job who groans in the midst of his untimely suffering: “Oh, that my words could be written. Oh, that they could be inscribed on a monument, carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead, engraved forever in the rock. But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God! I will see Him for myself. Yes, I will see Him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed at the thought!” (Job 19:23 – 27)
But make no mistake, the text in John 15 says that in the midst of bearing much fruit, God prunes me. Why? The text says, so that I might bear more fruit in the future. Whatever else it is, pruning is apparently a preparatory thing. Does God ever do anything in life’s easy goodtime to prepare me for the coming bleak midwinter storms? It would seem so.
I have been pruned early, untimely hoed, experienced my share of ill – timed suffering, some of it extremely painful and seriously life threatening. With all of that experience, I would not for a moment suggest that I have any real answers or explanations for the reason behind those times. How does a person reason out something like a five – year – old being abandoned by a mother, or a young father being stricken with a fatal disease? I don’t have any answers, but I do have an observation. My life experiences have had an apparent divine continuity to them; something that I really have come to appreciate since Christ surprised me in early middle age and I came to faith in him. This goes far beyond the pop philosophy of, ‘everything happens for a reason.’ Everything that has happened in my life has been inextricably linked to what is or what is about to happen. I am persuaded that God in His grace has hold of my life in a kind of way that no experience is ever wasted and every experience I will have, I will be prepared for.