I love the skeletal trees of winter. All day I could linger in the park staring at the black lines revealed against the silent, funereal sky. The flourish long gone, winter moves in to reveal the secrets summer, spring and fall labored to canvas with color. Winter tells a story that few care to hear.
But I was listening. I reached for its cold hands. I traded my warm seclusion and went with courage and curiosity into the bleakness. The park was empty but for one or two other figures moving furtively along the paths and I treasured each step of the stark desolation.
The other seasons display. Winter reveals. What feels like victory in summer is only pomp. When circumstance changes, it cannot sustain. Autumn makes a strong showing but blows away like confetti after a parade, piling up in the streets to mold and rot.
In winter I saw not death but the very heart and bones which hold life. And what I witness on earth is not life in the everlasting sort, but life waiting to graduate into the true splendor that is a heaven sustained by God the Creator and Father.
And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Ecclesiastes 12:7
Meeting God at the Park 