If you travel the back roads near Lake Ontario in winter, you’ll see the orchards standing in their bare honesty. Apple trees—so heavy with color and sweetness in September—now hold their knobby branches against a wide gray sky. They look like old hands lifted in prayer, or in simple surrender. Along the slopes of the drumlins above the Finger Lakes, vineyards stretch in dark, twisting lines—gnarled vines gripping frozen soil, their shapes sharp and humble against the pale hills.

This is the dormant season, the long exhale of the land—a season that can feel like absence, though it is not.

Farmers here know that winter is its own kind of work. They move slowly through the rows with pruners in hand, snipping and shaping with a patience formed by generations. To an untrained eye, pruning can look like injury—branches cut back, canes removed, the growth of last year dropped into the snow. But those who tend orchards and vineyards understand: what is trimmed now is what allows fruit to flourish later. It is a discipline rooted in trust, in the belief that life waits beneath the bark, gathering strength where our eyes cannot go.

Walk between the trees in January and you may hear the faint creak of wood shifting in the cold. Snow softens the ground, muffling each step. And yet, beneath the crusted layer of frost, the roots are at work—drawing in what nourishment the soil still offers, storing it quietly for the season to come. There is a deep hum below the surface that resists hurry and refuses fear.

The vineyards above the lakes mirror this truth. The vines, stripped of leaves and fruit, lie twisted against the winter sky. They look almost fragile in their bareness. But if you kneel and brush aside the snow, you’ll find the ground still holding warmth, faint as a heartbeat. Much of life—plant life, human life—happens where we cannot see it. What looks like stillness is often preparation.

And this, too, is the way of divine love.

There are seasons in our own lives when everything familiar seems cut back—when we feel like those trees standing open to the wind, exposed and unsure. Work slows. Energy thins. The branches we relied on no longer hold their weight. It is easy, in those moments, to believe we have been diminished.

But pruning is not meant to harm. Pruning clears what crowds and makes space for what longs to grow.

The Holy One tends us with a care not unlike the growers who move through those winter rows—knowing what must be surrendered and what should remain. Knowing that fruitfulness cannot be forced, only encouraged. Knowing that rest is not failure, but part of the rhythm of creation.

We may not feel the quiet work happening within us, but that does not mean it is absent. Growth often begins in the dark, long before light warms the branches. Roots deepen precisely when the surface looks still. Strength gathers beneath the bark.

In the weeks to come, the first thaw will loosen the soil. Sap will rise. Buds will swell on branches that seem impossibly bare. And the orchards and vineyards will carry the signs of what they have been preparing for all along.

So we wait—gently, faithfully—held by the same love that moves through winter fields.

Wait without rushing the thaw.
Wait without demanding proof.
Wait with lives open to the quiet work being done.

If this season feels thin or bare, you are not alone.
If you cannot yet see what is taking shape, you are not behind.

Perhaps the invitation is simply this:
to stand where you are, rooted and honest,
to trust the careful hands at work beyond your sight,
to believe that what has been trimmed is not the end of your story,
to receive the love that is already preparing your breaking forth, just beyond the thaw.