Have you ever noticed how quietly snow falls? It is as if all of nature pauses to notice, standing in silent wonderment as glistening flakes drift from the sky.
It is not lost on me, the irony, that the feathery softness of snow occurs during the harshest season. It falls in the bleak mid winter, when “earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone”.
The same can be witnessed in life. During our bleakest seasons, when all around us seems hard as iron and cold as ice, there can also be found the gentle wonder of Stillness. Yet oft times, the cold, barren landscape, of a difficult experience, overshadows the tender gifts which fall around us.
Intentionally taking pause, to notice those simple gifts, will profoundly shape our experience through the difficulty, and it will also open us to possibilities that would otherwise remain unknown.
There is always beauty amidst the bleak.
We have only but to notice.