In Severe Winter Weather

Jan 21, 2025

Beloved ~ 

          Cold as a well digger’s lunch box is how my father-in-law described weather like today.  The predicted high temperature is 9 degrees, with a windchill of -9 overnight.  Cold enough to freeze everything in the well digger’s lunchbox, I should think.    
          All of the city shelters for our unhoused neighbors are over capacity but turning away no one, making up pallets on floors wherever there’s space so that everyone who wants to can sleep indoors.  At the Severe Winter Emergency Shelter where several of us volunteer, guests come in cold to the bone.  We trade their wet socks for dry ones, stuff their pockets with hand warmers, wrap them in blankets and keep the coffee and hot chocolate flowing.  As one volunteer said, everyone is medically fragile in this weather.  It is such a privilege to be part of this life-saving project and I’m really proud of how our church has stepped up to volunteer and to provide supplies these past weeks.  The cold is expected to last throughout most of February, so we have lots of days left this season.   Consider getting involved in some way.* 
          As another pastor and I were debriefing a recent shift at the shelter, we got to talking about the spiritual nature of the work, things God is showing me, as she described it.  The most significant for me lately is that when we are dead center in the will of Christ, serving the least of these with what we have, even then we do not have the luxury of everything being easy, going smoothly, coming out perfectly.  Instead, the work of the kingdom in this world is messy, imperfect, frustrating, exhausting, crazy, hilarious, sad, fun, sometimes scary, and usually horrifically underfunded.  I am not sure I believed otherwise before working at the shelter, but the insight does somehow feel new to me.  Knowing we are doing God’s will doesn’t make God’s will any easier to do in a world so resistant to it.  The work would be profoundly easier with some community funding - with some paid staff and a permanent location.  Then again, it would lack the generosity, good will, humility and courage of this set of volunteers who are willingly trading their personal time, effort and energy to provide such hands-on tender care to neighbors whose life situations are profoundly different from their own.  And that would be a big loss - or at least, a very different kind of work in our midst.  
          My point, I suppose, is that the Spirit is most definitely in the mix on the nights the severe weather shelter  happens.  It’s better than any tv show or movie, if that’s how you spend your evenings.  I never wonder what God is doing in the world these days, because I see it every shift I work.  Please keep yourselves and everyone around safe in this weather.  Let your church know if you need help.  
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Peace & Prayers, 
annette,  pastor, preacher, neighbor, mama, grandma, quilter, knitter, dallier, reader, friend, gardener ~ in no particular order  
 

*Some particular BSWERS needs right now:                  
travel size hand lotion - something like this
                                         
any size winter coats, especially larger mens’ sizes
women’s warm pants, size 4 or 6.
Cough drops - big bags of individually wrapped
Travel size tissue packs

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