A couple of weeks ago, before venturing into Michigan’s dreadful mid-winter cold to retrieve our daughter, Evelyn, from basketball practice, Jennifer called to me, asking, “How do I look?” I came around the corner from the living room to see she looked the winter part. Hat, gloves, and coat—all were in place, as they should be. All except for one detail. She was sockless and wearing her summer flip-flops.
“You look summery,” I said, implying a momentary sense of a far better season’s intrusion.
“It’ll be a quick trip,” she replied, “and I won’t be getting out of the car.”
“Good idea,” I said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she replied, the door closing behind her.
Returning to what I was doing before, I thought how “summery,” a made-up word used to infer summer’s fresh, bright, and relaxed feeling, bore no audible difference to the noun “summary,” which is a word tinged with brevity. In other words, a summary is short. It’s a fuller portion of information distilled into its essential parts, ultimately telling us in brief only what we need to know.
Unfortunately, my mind, already suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), followed my disorder’s doldrums down into a moment of frustration. I thought that summery and summary are kin here in Michigan. Indeed, summers in Michigan are short. They so often feel like barely a synopsis of the season’s essential parts—the warmth, clear blue skies, sunshine, and all that makes summer so wonderful. What other states enjoy at full-throttle for four or five months, we barely get three, if that. I’ve mentioned before that Michigan is one of the states with the fewest number of sunny days. And setting aside for a moment the Upper Peninsula, where it’s entirely possible to have a foot of snow until the end of May, here in the Lower Peninsula, where I live, we’ve had snow dumped on us in the middle of May. Sure, it’s gone just as soon as it arrives. But it has happened. Back in 2016, we had an inch of snowfall on May 15. I remember because I was driving in it, and I recall questioning my geographical life choices.
But enough of my bemoaning about Michigan. As I said, when the door closed behind Jennifer, my SAD kicked in. I have to work hard to overcome those moments. That said, something else happened when I left home the following day.
Before leaving for the office, I sat down at the kitchen table and told Jennifer, “You know, I’m tired of this. I’m going to sit here and drink coffee until the sun comes up, and then, I’ll go.” I went on to explain that I’m thoroughly exhausted by leaving home and returning home in the darkness. This time, I was going to wait for the sun to rise before doing anything. I called out to our Google Home device, “Hey, Google, what time does the sun rise today?”
“The sun will rise today at 8:17 AM,” she answered.
It was 6:30 AM. Still, I insisted I wouldn’t leave until I saw the sun’s rays. Five minutes later, when I stood up to go anyway, Jennifer admitted to wishing she were a betting woman. She knew that sun or no sun, I’d change my mind and muscle through. And so, I grabbed my things, kissed her goodbye, and left.
That morning, I decided to shake things up a little and take a slightly different route, one that had me joining southbound US-23 just a little further north than usual. I’m glad I did because I saw something I wouldn’t have typically seen, and it was refreshingly recalibrating.
On the east side of the highway and just beyond the safety fencing, someone decorated a small evergreen tree with Christmas lights. Being on the highway’s right-of-way, I’m sure no one owns the tree. Not to mention, the tree is quite some distance from any of the area’s surrounding houses. With that, it’s a mystery how the little tree has electricity. Still, there it is, out in the middle of nowhere, all by itself beside the highway, piercing the perpetual Michigan darkness with its twinkling colors.
I had a thought when I saw it.
For as dark as things may seem sometimes, there’s Christmas right out in the middle of all the humdrum. There it is, a beaming reminder of the incarnation of God’s Son for my rescue. Because of His person and work, none of what’s filling the surrounding shadows of this world’s winter is forever, only the divine summer of Christ and my eternal future with Him.
At 70 miles per hour, I didn’t get to see the tree for very long. Within seconds, it was in my rearview mirror until, eventually, it was gone. In that sense, it was only a brief prompt, a summary glimpse of a summery illustration. But what it summarized in that moment was vast and powerful. Against a sunless landscape draped in the blistering chill of Sin, Christ’s arrival remains fixed. He came, and when He did, He turned back the rulers and authorities and the cosmic powers of this present darkness against which we wrestle (Ephesians 6:12). Defeating those dreadful specters, he gave “light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79).
Passing this tree is now my usual route. Whether I’m coming or going in the dark, I want to see it. I like that it’s there, and I’m thankful to whoever is keeping it lit. It’s as if the tree, with its branches glistening cheerfully and waving in the highway winds, is saying to every passerby, “Rejoice! Christ was born for you!”
Cruciform Stuff 