WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN WINTER COMES? [W, 4-29-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN WINTER COMES?   [W, 4-29-20]

Oscar Thomas Olson told this story of growing up on a farm.

He wanted a bb gun. His father said, “No, you’re too young to be responsible.”  He begged and pleaded. Finally his father relented, but said he could not shoot it around the barn. He agreed. Any agreement to get that gun.

But there were so many good targets around the barn. One day when his father was away, he went to the barn to practice with his new gun. From the loft he heard the tinkling of glass. He hurried up. Their old-fashioned storm windows--the kind that are put on from the outside of the windows, with hinges, and cover the entire window--were stored in the loft. His errant pellet had broken every window. Except one. The pellet had lost its power by the time it got to the last window in the stack.

Being a smart kid, he quickly moved the back window to the front of the stack, so that the broken ones did not show.

The problem was… winter was coming. Sooner or later his father would go up to the loft to get the windows and discover that they were broken.

He said, “My summer was ruined. All the fun I intended to have with my new gun, everything else, all I could think about was those broken windows. Finally, I could stand it no longer. I went to my father and told him what I had done.”

“I know,” his father said. “I was just waiting for you to tell me.”

“Never,” said Oscar Thomas, “did I feel closer to my father than I did at that moment.”

John Robert McFarland