Three wintry questions

 

 In the interests of a quick, simple and enjoyable blog post here at midweek, I'm borrowing just three questions from the Wednesday Hodgepodge with Joyce at From This Side of the Pond.

I picked questions 1, 2, and 5.

1. What kind of winter person are you-snow lover, fireplace snuggler, winter adventurer, or indoor hibernator? Elaborate. 

 I'm a little bit of all four, I guess.  I do like snow, and especially enjoy watching it fall.  I hate driving in snow, but I don't mind walking in it if I have proper footgear.  We don't have a fireplace, but do have a wood stove in both home and cottage, so snuggling up to those is a definite option.  There is truly nothing like wood heat.  I don't mind a winter adventure like a walk, a drive, or even an easy hike, but nothing more adventurous than that, thank you.  There are times when I feel like hibernating indoors, but that said, I do try to get outdoors every day in winter, whether to walk or just get some early morning light.

2. The Pantone color of the year is cloud dancer, described as a gentle, billowy off white shade. The color symbolizes 'peace, clarity, quiet reflection, renewal, and a soft reset'. Of the terms just listed which do you need most in your life this winter? 

Quiet reflection and renewal.  I would also love to do a gentle 7-day home reset.  Our little cottage in the woods, below, is a magical place in winter and invites times of reflection and renewal.  It's very seasonal though so we tend to pick nights with warmish temps to stay there.

5. Thomas Wentworth Higginson is credited with this quote-

"How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year." 

Agree or disagree? Tell us why. 

I agree completely, both regarding actual winter and also the wintry seasons in our lives.  The Bible contains many references to winter, snow, and ice, and I am glad that we have actual winter to show us what those look like.  I am thinking especially of Isaiah 1:18 which pictures salvation as a fresh fall of snow: 

"Come now, let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

And I do believe too, that it is very often in the wintry seasons of our lives where we learn the lessons of faith and beauty that Thomas Higginson alluded to.  Those are the times we learn to lean on God and to trust His workings in our lives, and we find that those seasons have their own unique beauty.

And there are the three wintry questions and my simple thoughts and answers to them.