Celebrating Winter

Default thumbnail.

January 9, 2012 | No comments yet

Send to Kindle

By:  Staci Stallings

Winter is not my favorite time of year.  Let’s just get that out there straight away.  I don’t like to be cold, and I’m cold a lot.  Winter makes that worse because it’s cold outside, and the floors get cold, and keeping the house warm can sometimes be a challenge when Northerns decide to blow in.

But I learned something interesting about winter the other day from my son.  Being the inquisitive, energetic little kid he is, Christmas break was just impossible to handle without doing something!  So he came in here and wanted to know if he could go mow the grass.

I know what you’re thinking.  Trust me. I know. I have weird kids.

I told him, “No.”

In minutes he was back.  “But, Mom.  It’s looks terrible.”  And the face he makes with terrible is just priceless.

“No.  It’s too cold.”

“I’ll wear my coat.”

“The grass doesn’t need cut.  It’s not even growing right now.”

“But it looks terrible.“  (Other than it being yellow and covered with leaves, it really doesn’t look that bad!)

“No.  Not today.”

I think he waited about five minutes.

“Mom, please!  I want to mow! PLEASE!’

Now if Dennis was still here, he would have hired the kid, flown him to Iowa, and put him right to work.  More than that, he would never have believed that anybody liked to mow so much that they would want to go out in the winter to do so!

However, I could see that my son was not going to let this go without a very good reason.  So I told him…

“Look, the grass is sleeping right now.  It’s hibernating.  If you go out there now and whack the heads off the grass, it will really hurt it.”

“Why?  What’s different about now?”

“Well, you see, grass is kind of like us.  In the summertime when it’s growing, it’s working on growing, and so to trim some off the top just tells it to grow some more.  But right now, it’s sleeping.  If it’s sleeping, it’s resting, and it needs its rest.  If you chop it off, you’re going to tell it that it’s time to grow, not to sleep, and that will make it really tired because it needs this time to rest.”

“Oh.”  Apparently that satisfied him because he didn’t ask about mowing the lawn again.

The cool thing is, I never really thought about it like that.  We are kind of like the grass although we fight it something fierce.  As it says in Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything.  A time to grow and a time to sleep.  A time to cut and a time to let it lay fallow.  A time to run and a time to rest.  Okay.  That’s a paraphrase, but the concept holds.Two Trees

I think too often we’ve got the growing, cutting, and running thing down.  We run and we do and we work and we run some more.  What we don’t have as good of a handle on is the resting part of that equation.  Look at the sleep studies they’ve done.  We are stressed out because we’re trying to have spring and summer growth time all the time.  Morning, noon, night, 3 AM. 24/7, 365 days a year, and Leap Year is just a good day for catching up.

It doesn’t work like that.  Or at least it doesn’t work well.  We are like the grass.  We need the winter to just… chill.

So schedule some “wintertime” in your day.  A block of time to just breathe and be and relax and rest.

If God designed that time for the grass, don’t you think He planned as much for us as well?

 

Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, we only recommend products or services we believe will add value to our readers.

Read More

SLW: The Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Default thumbnail.

July 13, 2010 | No comments yet

By:  Staci Stallings All of Chapter 1 in the Living in the Light Bible Study, The Gifts is now posted. Check it out. Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless,…

Read More

SLW: The Gifts

Default thumbnail.

July 6, 2010 | No comments yet

By:  Staci Stallings As promised… a new Living in the Light Bible Study is now up at Spirit Light Works. In the month of July, we will explore the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  What are they?  How can they help change your life for the better? Some of the links in the…

Read More

A New Plan

Default thumbnail.

June 29, 2010 | No comments yet

By:  Staci Stallings In May, when Dennis was going to be gone for a few weeks for knee surgery, we talked about how to fill in for the days he would miss on the blog.  I chose at that time to set up a parallel blog, “Spirit Light Works” so that I could…

Read More