C.S. Lewis makes a point about the weather: enjoy it! We might argue that the arctic cold in Colorado this week (I saw -20 at one point) is beyond enjoying. It’s only worth complaining about.

We might be wrong.

I have livestock which means I have responsibilities. The other morning, I pulled on a battery-powered vest, insulated coveralls, hat, gloves, heavy boots and trekked to the barn to check on my animals. They were enjoying the weather a lot more than I was.

The dogs raced through the snow, tackling each other and then shaking off the snow to run again. Goats came racing out of their barn to gobble the hay I threw in. Not a lot of complaining there.

Lesson to be learned

As I walked back to the house, the sun was rising over the frosty horizon, hazy as though I was looking through a window smeared with Vaseline. Ice crystals in the air gave an other-world look.

Photo by Xander Brown. Taken near my location.

A little later, the rising sun pushed light through those ice crystals like a prism to form a sun dog. A sundog is different from a rainbow. You see a rainbow when you look away from the sun but you see a sundog when you look toward the sun.

The colors were more subtle than a summer rainbow but formed a triumphant set of parentheses around the sun.

The river that flows near our house was also clogged with huge chunks of ice. Hardships? Maybe.

Frigid Hardships

What struck me was how, in the middle of something tough like arctic temperatures, there is still beauty around us if we look for it. Like the sundog.

And those chunks of ice in the river will be long gone soon. These hardships are temporary.

My animals knew it and were celebrating the weather. God’s creation amazes me with its beauty and resilience.

C.S. Lewis was right. We can enjoy any weather.

(Thank you to Xander Brown for sharing his photo of the sundog near our town.)