Heavenly Father,

Winter is here. We are in the thick of it. The air is as cold and crisp and dreary as the atmosphere of our times. As the political and social landscape of our God-rejecting nation rumbles and devastates, so too do the the blistering winter winds lay siege to the natural world.

The gray of the sky is periodically pierced by the naked branches of dormant trees. Having dropped their dead weight months before, they hunker down, their cells conserving every ounce of energy they can, while still somehow lifting their arms to their Creator, begging for the grace to make it through winter.

I feel their plight. At times my own heart desires to close in on itself in order to conserve what strength I have left within me. I feel the forces of the world crash against my frame time and time again like the hurricane winds that cyclically bash the Gulf Coast each summer.

I wonder how many times you will test the firmness of my roots, Father? How many days will I weep for the bitter cold of this winter? There seems to be no end to the sinfulness of man, and even less to the sinfulness that resides within my own heart. It seeks to rot my person from the inside out while my attention is fixed instead on the steady decay of the landscape around me.