There is a particular kind of snow that arrives only when the air is cold enough to ring like glass. It falls in a thin, airy veil—so light you could almost believe it hesitated on the way down. This morning it lay across the yard like a blessing whispered rather than spoken, barely covering the worn snow, yet bright enough to make the whole world blink.

After days of hiding, the sun returned—quietly at first, then with warmth enough to set the snow alight. Each flake became a small prism, scattering color I had not asked for but received as grace. Even the icicles along the porch seemed to stir, releasing one clear bead at a time, as if the darkness had finally loosened its hold.

Some fur-covered prophet has announced six more weeks of winter, and perhaps that is true. Still, when I look past the wind chime and the suet feeders toward the garden, I see more than a long season of cold. I see the garage wall where snowdrops will soon pierce the earth’s crust. I see crocuses, daffodils, and grape hyacinths waiting to insist on their return. I see the deep bed where peonies will lift their burgundy tips like sleepers remembering the shape of morning.

On the dining table—half-buried beneath the week’s mail—rests the seed catalog. I meant only to glance at it, but of course it opened like a door. Before long, I was imagining cucumbers and summer squash, spring onions, kale, and tomatoes warm in the hand before they ever reach the plate. Winter has a way of inviting even the most disciplined gardener into holy daydreaming.

What surprises me each year is how much this quiet hope fills me—how something as small as a seed catalog, or a subtle change in winter light, can gently wake the spirit. It is not so much the promise of spring, I think, as the reminder that life does not hurry, even when we do. Winter teaches me that patience is not a delay but a devotion, one the Spirit returns to again and again.

I live in a world that rarely rests. Emails hum. Calendars tighten. The future presses in on the present until there is scarcely room to breathe. Yet outside my window, the snow does not rush to melt. The sun does not strain to climb. Beneath the soil, the bulbs wait with a confidence born of trust. They are not anxious about timing. They are not measuring themselves against tulips or peonies. They rest in the rhythm written into them long before they ever broke ground.

Perhaps this is winter’s gentle invitation: to wait without fear, to trust that what is hidden is still held, still alive, and still becoming. The Spirit may not speak loudly in this season, but the teaching is everywhere—in the sharpened air, in the stillness, in the way the world seems pared down to what matters most.

So I stand at the window with the light pooling around me, the snow shimmering like a held note, and I let myself receive the promise of it all. Not simply that spring will come—though it will—but the deeper promise of life. Winter is a long lesson in trust, may we enter it gently. May we not hurry the cold away or doubt what cannot yet be seen. May we trust that the quiet is not empty, and that even now, life is at work beneath the surface.