Today

I cradle a cup of hot coffee to warm my hands, and watch the birds flitting around under the bird feeder. The winter is bitterly beautiful. From an insider looking out it is picture perfect, like a Christmas cards with glittering snow heaped in mounds. Like icing on a cake, so beautiful, and yet....

"Brr!" I shiver as I open the front door and peer up the hill. I squint into the distant white landscape with its blue and purple horizon looking for movement that would...or at least could be my husband returning from the daily chore of feeding and watering our horses. The branches of the trees--God's wind chimes--tinkle as the wind whines softly across the snow.

The images on our computer screen shimmer with the colors of light dancing across the ice and snow. It brings to mind the fairy stories...something you can read in a book. Something you can look at in a picture or a painting, but....

Like the birds flitting under the feeder, we don't just look at the scenery, or just read about it. We live here in the reality of cold. Bitter cold, snow cold, yes, beautiful bitter cold snow. Our world is here.

"So what do you do here in winters like this? Just sit at home?"

My husband is at a vegetable grower's convention held upteen years ago at the air port. A man from California is observing the runways and the snow 'out there'.

No, we put on our 'gear' and go about our daily lives, occasionally getting stuck, digging ourselves out, doing what we can.

Like the poet writes:

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow --A PSALM OF LIFE--

Our footprints may not be in the sands of time, and perhaps it would be more accurate to say they are in the snow of life. The encouragement is still ours, let us be doing what we can to encourage the poor souls of this life to turn to the Master for life, for love, and most of all, for salvation.