Solomon wrote that everything has its time and season, its place and purpose.
Such is the way, looking at the hard freeze taking place in much of the United States. A difficult moment which requires hardiness and forethought has come to us; covering the spigots, putting our plants indoors and so forth.
But it has a purpose, the hard winter. Some plants require a freeze in their off season. Such as in Colorado, where snowfalls that melt in spring provide a great deal of the water supply downstream.
And imagine that glowing spring, with flowers, as if they were smiling, themselves.
Solomon goes on to say that there is "nothing new under the sun", that everything that troubles us now, is nothing particularly different that past troubles that the people of the world faced. We need not complain too bitterly of the cold, but put it into a more linear perspective, and understand that it has happened before.
...she compasseth the whole world, and penetrateth into the vanity, and mere outsie (wanting substance and solidity) of it, and stretcheth herself unto the infiniteness of eternity; and the revolution or restoration of all things after a certain period of time, to the same state and place as before, she fetcheth about, and doth comprehend in herself; and considers withal, and sees clearly this, that neither they that shall follow us, shall see any new thing, that we have not seen, nor they that went before, anything more than we: but that he that is once come to forty (if he have any wit at all) can in a manner (for that they are all of one kind) see all things, both past and future.... -Marcus Aurelius
.
