Those were the days (or were they?)

I went out on an icy walk last week. And as I slid around the corner of a meadow, I had a flashback: THIS, HERE was the rock I sat upon, about six months ago, to watch the sun rise on the longest day, the solstice. I felt a bit nostalgic. Those were the days!

Looking back, it was easy to see God ‘within’ it all; rippling grasses in the meadow, wildflowers painting the landscape, birds orchestrating their summer sounds. What’s not to love?

But now, here, in the gloom and the cold and the ice? Are THESE the days, too? Surely the psalmist wasn’t just referring to the sunniest of times when he wrote: “This is the day that the LORD has made.” Otherwise, we’d just have a spirituality of all the best bits, which are disconnected from the rest, from the whole, maybe even from the majority of our life. And I’m not sure where that would get us, aside from wishing we were back in the past, where it was brighter. Or already in the future, where maybe times will be better.

One thing I’ve found helpful is to shift the way I see the flow of ‘the day’ (which also translates, I think, to the flow of the year). We tend, automatically, to think of night following day; yet this can make us feel constantly as if the best is behind us. We’ve enjoyed the daytime of our life, and now the night must inevitably fall. But there’s a different way of seeing it, spiritually.

The Creation account in the book of Genesis tells us, right from the first great act of beginning, that “there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.” And so, in this most original of understandings – which still prevails in Judaism – day follows night. Darkness is the pathway to the sunrise. It’s the beginning, the start of the new.

Perhaps we can aim to make the most of this one day, here – even if we’re wishing that times were lighter, or brighter, or better … and to look closely for God within it. After all, Jesus himself was born into ‘the land of deep darkness’, as Isaiah foretold, in that second great loving act of beginning – the Incarnation.

So what can we do during these short days of winter – these days that, for some of you, are dark days of circumstance? I wonder what we might find, if we sit upon a rock today, and let our eyes adjust. This could just be the start of something – especially if we learn to love today, as God does, instead of just enduring it. These ARE the days, after all, that God has made.