The water froze for my flock of sheep yesterday. My fingertips burn with January cold as I pick away at the ice. Strangely, the world can feel deeply heated and icy all at the same time.
Storms blowing in can make us turn inward—to build, through a million little decisions, our own little ice castles of self-protection – where we think we’re safe and secure, but no water still runs, and we end up dying of thirst inside our own defenses.
At the far end of the sheep fold, I try cracking the water well’s ice with my feed pail, with the heel of my boot. But the silver circle of ice, frozen in the standing water well at end of the sheep fold, refuses to budge. And somehow, my sheep need water, the mama ewes, Jewel and Krown, and their lambs, all the lambs, standing there by the hay rack, slowly chewing their cud, they need the water to somehow still run, even in these temperatures. Somehow, even when the world grows cold, the flock still has to drink.
” Forecasts can predict, but there’s a Good Shepherd who always protects all of His sheep. “
I haul back to the house through more than 2 feet of snow. Some forecasts are calling for another 10 to 20 cm of snow to fall tomorrow, more than another half foot. Other forecasts are calling for all kinds of things to fall, to keep falling, collapse, implode, for things as we’ve known, for all the ways we’ve always known, to begin to crumble and fall away. Forecasts can predict, but there’s a Good Shepherd who always protects all of His sheep.
I need a pitcher or two of steaming hot water to thaw out the frozen standing well. The mama ewes and their lambs are out there in the wee barn standing against the biting winds of a January clipper, counting on a shepherd to remember, to care, to come.
I stuff one glove in a pocket, keep the other glove on, keep my snowsuit on, my touque on, only slip my winter boots off in the mudroom, before I stumble into the kitchen, the sharp cold of my glasses fogging up in this meeting with warmth and hearth. Coldness has a tendency to always leave you blind.
“Coldness has a tendency to always leave you blind.“
After the water boils, I balance two full steaming pitchers of hot water in each hand, as I try to stand and slide back into my boots, try to manage the back door, the back steps, back out into the snow coming down.
Bending down at the fence at the edge of the sheepfold, I leave one pitcher of hot water to make a deep indent deep into a drift of snow, and I juggle the other one as I climb over, straddle the fence, dangle back over the fence to reach for the other pitcher, then kneel down in the snow by the sheep’s water well, and begin to slowly pour. The hope of heat over ice.
That’s what’s needed right now:
A slow and steady thaw.
Fears, and future forecasts of what could be coming, can freeze us, rumors of scarcity can harden us, pursuit of self-interest alone can make us grow cold.
When our love for each other grows cold, we trade the protection of the living God, for our own self-protective ice castles — and the world becomes a winter where no living water runs.
When there’s all kinds of lawlessness – when respect for human dignity erodes, when “the least of these” are treated as disposable, when justice for the vulnerable falls by the wayside, when the world is predominantly about might and not mercy – then the love of many will grow cold.
And when our love for each other grows cold, human respect collapses, common civility falls, cruelty becomes bureaucratized—and a society learns too late that personal indifference is how the cold dark wins.
When our love for each other grows cold, self becomes the center, relations with others become transactions with agendas, and our common life together ices over with fear.
When our love for each other grows cold, we trade the protection of the living God, for our own self-protective ice castles — and the world becomes a winter where no living water runs.
What will warm our hearts again, what will ignite our hearts again?
When our love for each other grows cold, self becomes the center, relations with others become transactions with agendas, and our common life together ices over with fear.
“By Your fire, You consume every trace of self-love in the soul. You are a Fire which drives away all coldness…” is what Catherine of Siena writes.
By the pure flame of God’s love, our impure motives and self-love that curves us inward is burned away, and the fire of His love thaws what’s frozen—until our love runs warm and free.
My yearling ram, the one with that curly shag hanging too low over his eyes, Meschach, he nuzzles my cheek, as I’m kneeled down in the snow, slowly pouring the steaming water down the well spout, all frozen rock solid with ice.
And I can see it, the thermal transfer. Conduction. The direct contact of hot water with ice. Then, just at the edges at first, the impossible: a ragged, gentle melting of the rock of ice.
Pour a bit more.
I try to work my fingers around the icy edge, try to gently pry. Little Jemmie, a yearling ewe, is standing on her hind legs, front hooves hanging over the top rail of the fence, pawing at my back, trying to get my attention.
“Just a … Jemmie… just a minute here, Jemmie… I’ve almost got this…. ice… out… “
And the disc of ice slips… and pops!
Cold hearts rationalize and demonize; warm hearts humanize and recognize and magnify… the face of God in every face.
Water runs. Water Fills. Jemmie, Meschach, and the lambs come in close to drink, drink, drink.
But by 8 am today, the water’s frozen again and by 8:30 am, I’m boiling water again, and, in temperatures like these, these days, you have to have a way to thaw your heart wide open again every single day.
We’ve got to daily keep our hearts thawed if we’re to keep being human and humane. Warmth isn’t weakness; warmth is absolutely vital—because what is the reality of true human vitality, if not a heart warm with love?
You’ve got to have a way to daily keep your heart thawed, in this kind of climate, because a cold heart is how love collapses – how life, as we all know it, falls.
Coldness isn’t merely some lack of feeling; it’s the self becoming the center of gravity, instead of the ways of Christ, the true gravity of the Kingdom that will never fall.
We’ve got to daily keep our hearts thawed, because any power without genuine warmth is dangerous, because hasn’t it been proven time and again: “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Cold hearts rationalize and demonize; warm hearts humanize and recognize and magnify… the face of God in every face.
You’ve got to daily keep your heart thawed, because coldness is how a life becomes dangerously curved inward. Coldness isn’t merely some lack of feeling; it’s the self becoming the center of gravity, instead of the ways of Christ, the true gravity of the Kingdom that will never fall.
Isn’t stoking our love of Christ the only thing that can make a heart burn?
Doesn’t the heart burn only when Christ is its flame? When has self-love ever made living water run?
As the ice melts and the water in the standing well runs again, as the lambs drink, I pet the necks of Jemmie and Meshach, sheep pressing in close and grateful to their shepherd. I linger, looking into their eyes, loving this petting them, loving them loving this, and me, and fearing nothing in this world because there is the heat of His perfect love.
And when I come into the warmth of the house, slide out of my snowsuit, when I sit down at my old blacksmith table that’s now my desk, I open up the journal, SACRED Prayer… and I still… simply slow and still….
And I pick up my pen, and begin this daily journaling of SACRED prayer, feel my heart thaw again, feel it ignite again, in the presence of my own Good Shepherd who leads me daily beside these still waters.
And even in days like these, still hearts can feel the sacred joy of getting to drink, drink, drink.
You’ve got to have a way to keep your heart from growing Cold:
SACRED Prayer: 90 days of deeper intimacy with God
In days like these, we’ve got to daily keep our hearts from growing cold.
In days like these we cannot afford to not be growing deeper intimacy, communion, and connection with God. SACRED Prayer will warm and ignite your heart by:
- Reducing stress and worry and increasing your peace
- Aligning your thoughts and actions with His Word
- Growing your relationship with and faith in God
- Transforming you to be more like Jesus
Take this sacred journey of prayer with Ann over the course of the next 90 days and be in awe of how God moves in your life and in your heart!
Pick up SACRED Prayer& pick up a beautifully different kind of new year — full of much hope, no fear, and endless living waters!
