12.12.2025 | Second Friday in Advent

Winter’s Whisper
 
Winter is knocking at our door. The forecast calls for plunging temperatures this weekend, with lows in the single digits. Yet somehow, through the cold nights, the heavy frost, and the snow of recent weeks, there are still glimpses of grace in the garden.
 
The winter pansies have miraculously continued to offer color and brilliance, even on the cloudiest of days. While most of the garden has slipped into hibernation, these pansies still shine as quiet messengers of hope in the darkness of the coming season.
 
With plants shriveled and trees standing bare in the dim light, holiness lingers. A gentleness covers the garden now. Yes, it is dark and somewhat gloomy, but it is also quiet and less hurried. Winter slows the pace for this old gardener, gifting me time to reflect on the year gone by, the successes and the failures, the joys and the sorrows. We remember. We ponder. We pray.
 
On this mid-December morning, in the chill and the silence, I pause to listen. I hear the whisper of the Creator offering peace in a chaotic time. We pray for hope. We pray for faith. We pray for love. And just when it seems our prayers rise into emptiness, a vision appears, a small red flower blooming in the cold.
 
Love breaks through.
 
John 1:5
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
 
Because love always breaks through.