In the shortest days of the year, very little grows. The tulip and the garlic that I planted in autumn are fast asleep. They could be dead for all I know. They are still buried. The temperature outside hovers in the teens, and those are the highs. I don’t even want to talk about the lows. Snow seems like it has a different crunch when it’s below zero as opposed to the kind I shovel when it heats up by twenty degrees but is still below freezing.

Words are the beloved garden sanctuary where I know and grow new things and try to make sense of hard things. Even and especially in the winter.

It was the first day of the school term. The children came to the school with bunches of flowers. That’s just what they do in that part of the world. Part holiday, part class, the first day is a kind of party. So, it wasn’t just an ordinary school day but a celebration of learning and new beginnings.

The men came all in black, faces covered, guns and ammunition slung over their arms like the old farm ladies in the market with their shopping bags. But there was no food in their bags, only the machinery and mechanics of death. The children would not be going home from school that day.

The whole world watched what happened. And then almost everybody forgot. We watched and we forgot. But God saw it all and never forgot a single moment.

Sowing. I cast the seed-words onto the paper, into snow or winter mud. There is work to be done in that garden—weeds to pull, plants to be moved, detritus to be raked or dug in. With sun and rain, plants grow, but yes, there is much to tend to and much to think about. For now, though, none of those warm weather activities are possible.

Will I plant from seed or go to the nursery to grow the plants I have in mind for the summer?

The sound of the blade whirring, hatred taking flight, softly whistling through the air, the sound like a song he could hear and learn and know by heart, having heard it so many times before, landing on his scarred and bleeding back because he was not what they wanted him to be—would never, could never know anything else but the rise and fall of the whipping branch that told him this was not the way. No! No more! So, after nine years, he ran back to his father and mother who saw only in his coming back the shame in his failure to be the monk they so badly wanted him to be because he never properly learned anything one needed to learn in the real world while he was failing in the monastery, the growing boy had to start school with children much younger than he. The teacher was kind to him. Maybe for the first time in his life, he could learn. He could breathe. John. Sixteen. Three. God. Loved so much. He gave…

Lorraine’s roses. Will they survive the heaving ice of winter? What of the aggressive rabbits—she’s projecting into spring—who seem to have taken to them like the latest green craze for their seasonal salad feast. And the lavender plants. Every year she watches over them, convinced that she has done something wrong and that they will not live. “They will die. This is the year they won’t make it,” she fears. We won’t know for sure until spring, I reassure her. And so far, every spring, green appears, stubbornly waking up as if to say “I am from the Mediterranean. But I’m growing in the Midwest. It’s going to be alright. There will be flowers.”

When he took home the black-bound book, his father caught him reading it. “No,” his dad cried out in rage. What was wrong with his son? The dad cut a switch from a tree and made his own mark on the already scarred back. So, he left his father and mother. He did not know where to go. But the teacher took him on a moped to church. He had never before seen anything like it. The real singing. The real praying. The teaching, the love. This family found him, a whole church found him. He was home. He was free.

Seeds. In the warmth of my home, I take a small pot, fill it from the bag of potting soil, sprinkle some herb seeds on the top, add a little more soil, pour water on and wait. Will they sprout and take hold? This is the wonder of it. They will. Water, soil, seed, sun, time—poof—plants. Those little dried pieces that seem almost like nothing actually turn into plants.

The senior class of the all-girls high school was singing with excitement. Dreaming of possibilities, each one had selected elegant clothes to wear for the events soon to come. All of those ended when the men arrived in a caravan of horror. The girls were taken away at gunpoint. Death was near, always near, or things worse than death—lives marked by captivity, exile, shame and the call to recant, renounce, revile what they loved.

Easy. Simplest plant on earth to grow. My friend is explaining to me how to grow potatoes. I have only tried once or twice and something didn’t work. All you have to do is take one and cut it into pieces. Make sure that each piece has an eye and put dirt over it. Some people cover with straw or mulch. As it grows, keep the plant covered. It wants to grow so badly you could grow one in a bag. “You’ll get the hang of it,” he says to me. “They will literally grow everywhere.”

And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.” Then all who believed were together and had all things in common. Then those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. Then there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” [Matthew 28; Acts 2; Acts 11; Acts 10]

God’s Word for us, to us—rescuing, saving—with us through everything, no matter what happens today, in this very moment, as I write and you read, sharper than any sword that might be wielded at us. Read on and find whatever you need for this day.