The snow had come, unlooked for and unwanted. Bright white beauty all around, even woods “lovely, dark and deep,” and yet I knew I had many miles to go before I could even think about sleep. So much to do, and here was another unwelcome delay in the day. The snowstorm swirled around me as I left the safe warmth of the house and trudged out to the car. Thick it came, and fast, wrapping me in its fierce coldness like a mantle of ice.

“No, not today. Not anyday like this. Why? I just don’t need this. I need to do so much. I’m too busy. Enough already!”

Just as I reached for the car door to wrench it open in annoyance and frustration that became worse as I realized I’d have to clean off the windows before I could leave, I was stopped in my snowy tracks.

A pure, lilting birdsong like tinkling crystals descends with the snowflakes.

I could hardly see anything in the blizzard. Why on earth would a bird be singing today of all days? If I were a bird, I’d be hidden deep inside some welcoming evergreen, shivering and puffing up my feathers against the creeping cold. But no, this brave bird was singing in the snowstorm, challenging the elements with his melody.

I peered through the onrushing ice-missiles to catch a glimpse of this winter songster at the top of the cherry tree, holding on to a bare twig against the freezing gale as if daring it to blow him from his perch. A goldfinch, singing his heart out as he whistled against the wind. An unseasonal song, but one that challenged me every bit as much as his challenge to the elements.

For why should he sing? No reason, for no bird nests in January snows. No territory to defend, no rivals to fight, no mate to lure. Just a delight in song, a snowsong to remind me that life is more than all my cares and burdens of the day.

Like Thomas Hardy’s “Darkling Thrush” who sang for him in winter, “when Frost was spectre-grey”—

“In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.”

Just a bird singing. Just notes on a scale. Just music on the wind. And for what?

I stopped, my hand outstretched towards the door handle, frozen not by cold but by enchantment and realization. A dawning that seeped into my thoughts of a reality beyond all this fussing and fighting, all this running to and fro, and getting and spending, laying waste our powers. The world is too much with us.

I stood and listened, the only audience in this winter concert hall, the only ears to hear this unique masterpiece. And I thought of what it meant, on such a day as this.

Like Hardy again:

“So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or night around…”

Nothing in this bleak midwinter gave any thought of joy or anticipation, no reason for such delightful, joyful music. And then I thought of how Hardy ends his poem of praise to his singer:

“That I could think there trembled through
His happy goodnight air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.”

I shook my head. For me, I was not unaware. For I did know of the blessed Hope, the reason for any such singing for joy. This blessed Hope “trembles through” all our existence here, a reminder that this is not all, and nothing in this life can ever compare to the future we anticipate, the sure and certain Hope that is as sure as the promise of God Himself.

As the song concluded, as the bird took flight and disappeared into the snow-filled air, the silence of winter descended as heavy as the soundless blanket of white all around me. It was if it had never been.

But in my heart I carried the words of that song, with that reminder of joy in the blessed Hope that makes all the monotonous moils of our life here as nothing in comparison to our God-filled future. Days may be filled with busy-ness, but our eternity is assured.

And for me at least, the song we shall sing of victory when Hope is completed, the promise realized, and joy fulfilled, will have the same elements of melody that made my heart sing that winter morning.

© Jonathan Gallagher