“Why do groundhogs wake up each year in early February?”
A Penn State researcher says they might emerge from their dens in February, not to see how much more of winter awaits, but in order to meet members of the opposite sex prior to mating season in March. The report says that boy groundhogs and girl groundhogs are not too much interested in one another for most of the year, but after a long winter’s hibernation, well…
So, the reason we have all this Groundhog Day hoopla has nothing to do with forecasting the weather. It is simply Punxsutawney Phil looking for Punxsutawney Phyllis. Hmm.
At this time of year, the words of Sr. Joyce Rupp, O.S.M. come to my mind….
One winter morning, I awake to see the magnificent lines of frost stretching across my windowpanes. They seemed to rise with the sunshine and the bitter cold outside.
They looked like little miracles that had been formed in the dark of night. I watched them in sheer amazement, and marveled that such beautiful forms could be born during such a winter-cold night.
Yet, as I pondered them, I thought of how life is so like that. We live our long, worn days in the shadows, in what often feels like barren, cold winter, so unaware of the miracles that are being created in our spirits.
It takes the sudden daylight, some unexpected surprise of life, to cause our gaze to look upon a simple, stunning growth that has happened quietly inside us.
Like frost designs on a winter window, they bring us beyond life’s fragmentation and remind us that we are not nearly as lost as we thought we were, that all the time we thought we were dead inside, beautiful things were being born in us.
Special thanks to David Leininger and to Sr. Joyce Rupp, O.S.M.
What little miracles do YOU see like frost stretching across a windowpane?
My Commentary:
The frost on a winter window is a small sermon preached without words. It forms silently, unnoticed, while we sleep. Nothing announces its arrival. No trumpet sounds. And yet, when morning comes, there it is — delicate, intricate, breathtaking — born out of darkness and cold.
So much of life works this same way. We assume growth requires warmth, clarity, and ease. We believe that if we feel barren or numb, nothing good could possibly be taking shape within us. But the frost teaches otherwise. It reminds us that beauty does not wait for ideal conditions. Some of the most exquisite transformations happen precisely when life feels hardest.
Our spirits, too, do their deepest work in the night seasons — when hope feels thin, when answers are absent, when faith is carried more by habit than by feeling. In those hours, something quiet is forming. Patience. Compassion. Resilience. Trust. We do not see it because we are living inside it.
Then comes the light — an unexpected moment, a word, a grace we didn’t know we needed—and suddenly we glimpse what has been growing all along. Like frost revealed by sunrise, we discover that we were never empty or abandoned. We were becoming.
And what we thought was dead was, in truth, preparing to shine.
I’M ALWAYS HAPPY FOR PEOPLE WHEN I SEE GOD BLESSING THEM THE WAY GOD HAS BLESSED ME!
Please share with a friend on this Groundhog’s Day.
