Sandston Presbyterian Church
A Sermon by Ken Goodrich
January 24, 2010
Ecclesiastes 3
"Midwinter: A Time For...?"
For everything, there is a season…a time to heal…a time to break down…a time to weep…a time to release…a time for peace. Everything has its own season…and God has made every [season] beautiful in its time.
* * * * *
I got the article off the Internet from msnbc.com, which copied it for
their “News From Around the World” section off a report out of London. Under
the headline “The Worst Day of the Year,” this is how it reads:
Is the midwinter weather wearing you down? Are you sinking in debt after the
holidays? Are you angry with yourself for already breaking your New Year’s
resolutions? Do you wish you could crawl back under the covers and not have
to face another day of rain, sleet, snow, and paperwork? Yes, yes, yes, and
yes, probably. Because, after all, it is the third Monday in January, which,
according to a British psychologist, is “the most depressing day of the
year.” Dr. Cliff Arnall, who specializes in seasonal disorders (betcha
didn’t know there was such a thing, did you?) at the University of Cardiff
in Wales, has calculated that misery peaks once a year every year on the
Monday of this past week. His equation is broken down into seven variables:
weather, debt, monthly salary, time since Christmas, time since failed quit
attempt (that is the New Year’s Resolution you didn’t keep), low
motivational levels, and the need to take action.
Arnall found that, while days technically get longer after December 21st,
weather systems take hold in January, bringing dark clouds, rain, the
occasional sleet, and snow. At the same time, a majority of people break
their healthy resolutions six to seven days into the new year, and even the
hangers-on, by the third week, have fallen off the wagon, torn off the
nicotine patches, and eaten the fridge empty. Added to that, any residual
dregs of holiday cheer and family fun have kicked the bucket by the third
Monday.
“Following the initial thrill of New Year’s celebrations and the promise of
turning over a new leaf,” Arnall says, “reality starts to sink in. This
realization coincides with the dark clouds setting up shop overhead, coupled
with the obligation to pay off Christmas credit card bills.”
Up to a third of the population, in Britain at least, suffers from seasonal
affective disorder, or—are you ready for this?—SAD for short, also known as
winter depression. While most cases of the winter blues are not severe, 2 to
5 percent of those with SAD cannot function without treatment.
Now, here is the kicker. While his formula is sincere and Professor Arnall’s
postulations somewhat legitimate, the research and his calculations were
devised in order to assist an overseas travel company “analyze when people
should book and do book holiday travels, and compute those trends.” It
seems, and this is a quote from the article—the best one, I think—“that
people are more likely to buy a ticket to paradise when they feel like
hell.”
Even though we might be skeptical about discerning one, specific day as the
“worst” or “most depressing” of the year, and though some sarcastic,
twisted-humor folks, such as I, cannot help but get goofy about seasonal
affective disorder called SAD, for heaven’s sake, nevertheless, there is
some proof that long about the mid of winter, many if not most sane people
are going a bit insane.
A spokesperson for the Royal College of General Practitioners in London,
referring to Arnall’s equation, said, “I wouldn’t doubt it’s veracity, but
you must remember that there are a number of different causes of depression.
It may be something about one’s personality or genetic makeup or breakdown.
But,” he concludes, “for those who suffer from external things, I can see
where the third Monday in January could be the most depressing day.”
Ah, there it is. For those who suffer from…external things, meaning those
events, happenings, and facts of life over which we have no control, which
are not personal.
You see, it is one thing to suffer the slings and arrows with which life
assaults us in the normal course of living it: our own aches and pains,
economic hardship, broken relationships, dashed dreams, the natural
disasters of earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, the dyings and
deaths of those we love, all of which assail us every season, at any and all
times, with and without warning.
It is something else altogether to suffer, that is, to anguish, despair,
grieve over, become depressed about…shortened days and rainy nights, the
chill in the air, cloud cover, snow on the ground, spring break being as far
away on the bleak horizon as the twelfth of never.
The great difference is we get to decide how Winter is going to affect us.
In the umpiring business, which I have been a part of for the last year,
there is a favorite and probably over-used expression especially in regard
to rain-outs, delays, make-up dates, and that sort of high inconvenience:
“It is what it is.” Well, everything “is what it is—unless, of course, you
bought into Bill Clinton’s defense during the Monica Lewinsky mess that it
depends on what the definition of is is. Everything is what it is. And so,
Winter—these three months of virtual nothingness, where, after New Years,
everything comes to a screeching, jarring halt and just stays stuck there
from January through March—is what it is. But, it is also what we make of it
or do with it.
More than anything else, certainly more than any other season or time of
year, Winter is a mindset. It is an attitude. And it is a choice. We get to
choose whether we will endure or embrace it; whether we shall suffer or
savor it; whether we wish it over already or take from it gladly, greedily,
and gratefully what it wants to give us.
For everything there is a season, a time for, a time to be. And this season
is a time for many, if not most of us, to shut down, rest, be still, let go
of, relax, shore up, rejuvenate, be restored. The rush of and through the
year-end holidays is still only just behind us, the busyness of spring will
be here soon enough. No, really, soon enough.
But for now, in the bleak midwinter—cold, dark, rainy, blustery, empty,
slow-moving, hardly moving at all, though it is—nevertheless, take what it
wants to give us, what God wants to give us with it, because of it, what God
has purposed it for.
You choose, I decide what we will do with the external things of this
season. I choose, you decide who we shall be in this time. Of course it is
what it is. But what, for you, for me, is it going to be?
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