The Essential Preparation of Wintering

We may not see tangible evidence of where we are going, what God is doing, or how we are growing, but wintering is essential preparation for life to flourish. Uncertainty, like winter, clears the landscape of familiarity so we can see ourselves clearly as Christ’s masterpiece, bringing value and beauty into the world.

Renewal is the outcome of trust in God’s hidden work within us. And my heart is renewed by stilling images from the Exodus story. Before Moses was tasked with leading the Israelites out of Egypt, his leadership experience on a résumé could have read: tended borrowed sheep on land owned by his wife’s father; isolated in a strange place for forty years.

And the Israelites weren’t equipped with prior experience or familiar maps on making the transition from enslavement to freedom either. Everything about the Exodus journey was new, unfamiliar, and rife with uncertainty.