Waiting for ice to thaw
Note: I wrote this as a Sabbath reflection, initially for Christ City Church when one of our Sunday services was virtual due to the winter storms of February 2026. I sat with it and then turned it into this visual reflection - juxtaposing the experience of bitter winter storms with the brutality of ICE in American cities and the longing for the passing of both storms.
Waiting for ice to thaw
A winter storm moved through our area recently bringing some of the coldest and harshest weather we’d seen in a long time. At first, the snow fell making the city quiet and picturesque. And then the following night, the temperatures plummeted even farther, bringing sleet and leaving a layer of ice over all the snow making everything frigid, and rigid, and biting.
This winter has been hard.
Ice surrounding us as it is.
In his essay on Seasons, Parker Palmer writes that Winter is a season, “When death’s victory can seem supreme: few creatures stir, plants do not visibly grow, and nature can feel like our enemy”.
But then Palmer takes a turn…reminding us that even in the cold, and hard, and dark of winter there are gifts. The reminder that even in times of dormancy, rest is essential to all living things. Sabbaths are necessary for us as we make our way through all seasons – especially the hard ones.
Winter can also bring a clarity to our lives.
In winter – when things are stark – one can see through the trees, and weeds and underbrush. Our views are uninterrupted by the growth and show and distractions that can fill our lives in other seasons. In winter when things around us are laid bare – it can become clear what is good, and necessary, and just, and right, and beautiful, and needed. Winter shows us who we are. And invites us to become something deeper, richer, and better – in the aftermath of ice – and snow.
In her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead, Marilynne Robinson describes a scene - between a Father and Son. They’ve spent the better part of a hard, emotional day, cleaning up their grandfather’s grave site and the dusk has settled between them. They finish their task, and for a minute they pray together. But during the prayer, the young son peeks his eyes open and he notices that as they stand there – saying prayers – he can see both the Sun setting on one horizon and the Moon rising on the other.
The in-between of it all.
Not quite day, not quite night. Not quite here and not quite there. Standing in a field of graves, praying for better days, yet finding thanks for the one that’s in front of him nevertheless.
Maybe – hopefully – that’s us. In the in-between of pain and healing, the mix of hope and despair, anger and solace. In the dead winter – and all that such a season means, cold days, long nights, frozen as it is.
Remembering that resurrection is on the other side of death and Ice doesn’t have the last word.