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Good morning.

One of my Christmas presents was an Almanac for 2018.  It’s an endlessly fascinating book.  In the dreariest, darkest days of January I pored over the table of sunrise and sunset times.  I can tell you that on the 1st of January, sunrise in Glasgow was at 8.47am, compared to 8.06 in London. Yesterday’s times were nearly an hour earlier. 

The returning light is gathering pace.  February is a month of transition, of movement.   The darkness is pushed further back and we get faint whiffs of a new season on the way.  The Old English name for February was Sprout-Kale, because that’s the season when the old stalks were ready again for growth. It’s cold still, and dark, but the hints are there. 

Strangely, it makes me think about my 92-year-old aunt.  She’s frail now, and housebound; a good deal of the time she’s in pain, and fed up with life.  I have a picture of her beside my desk, taken maybe 40 years ago; she’s striding along the road with the family, tall and straight, beaming at the camera, her eyes crinkled in the sunshine.  It reminds me that who she was, is still there, buried inside who she is now.

And the other night, it flashed out: she was feeling sick, and I suggested a sip of tonic water. As I was pouring it out, she murmured , ‘Go easy on the gin now…’   I laughed out loud, and she grinned like a girl.  Roll on the Spring, I say.

Loving God, thank you for returning light, and for respite from what ails us, from pain or age or weariness.  Thank you for life hidden and waiting in the darkness.  Amen.