W is for WINTER

It creeps up on you, almost unnoticed. There's no defining moment like leaves falling in autumn or flowers blooming in spring. Daylight hours have already begun to grow less, nights have been gradually getting colder and most of the birds have already left for their holidays. Yet there are other more subtle differences that let us know the season has changed. Wasps and flies that plague orchards during the autumn apple harvest have all but disappeared, weeds that have spent all summer reappearing, don't any more, a silver sheet covers the lawn each morning and farmers put their machinery to bed for a long sleep. And the whole countryside is enveloped by a blanket of stillness. Even the snow is quiet. It's as if the whole world has gone into hibernation behind closed doors and lit windows. Yet the truth is far from that perception as all our lives are just as busy, if not more so than before. It's just that a lot of it happens out of sight because the days are so short.

Our home was a flurry of activity on any winter evening. Tea cooking, homework to sort out, neighbours calling, dad arriving home from the market, cattle to feed and water, football to be played, Coronation Street, Double Your Money or Take Your Pick and the BBC News, piano to practise, CE on Fridays, Campaigners on Mondays, Music lessons on Wednesdays, phone ringing, clothes to dry on the inside line, music to listen to, Belfast Telegraph to read, toast for supper, prayers before bed and finally off to sleep. And you always went to bed with a slight air of optimism that a white carpet would lay itself down during the night and block the path to the school. Yet it rarely happened. But days slowly turned into weeks and then months and soon the longer evenings, squawking birds and opening flowers reminded us all that the season was well spent.

I didn't dislike winter, loved Christmas and New Year and there is something uniquely pleasant about a walk through the fields in the fading daylight after a particularly heavy frost, when all the trees stand like frozen statues, the puddles become mirrors, the grass crunches underfoot, the cold chill collides with your cheeks and the whole world is filled with silence. It's a time when you forget about the garden and the lawnmower, when fields are mostly empty, a time to gaze at a canopy of stars overhead and watch smoke rise vertically from a thousand chimney pots. A time when brightly coloured dresses, sandals and short sleeves give way to coats, boots and pullovers, a time when stew is preferred to salad and hot soup to iced drinks. A time when barbecues are packed away, coal fires are lit and the sun seems to race across the sky. At least, that's the way I remember winter as a young boy. Now, I rarely notice its coming and when I know it should be here, I wonder did it ever arrive at all or did it come in the middle of another season.

Some summer days can be as cold as Christmas, the grass is still growing in November and it's not unheard of to see snow at Easter. No, sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference, but one really frosty night is the only reminder you need that winter's there alright.

As I try to follow God, I realise that alone I am not able to keep to the path He wants me to take. It's too easy to let other things creep in unnoticed that very gradually slow my walk, change my attitudes and lower my standards, making me no different to those who have no faith at all.. It's so subtle yet I'm the last to notice, but so were Adam and Eve. That's why I need God constantly with me, in my thoughts and along every step, for even though the prince of darkness is here, my heart is never cold. Give him a frosty reception.