Water and dissolved nutrients move up from the roots through xylem tissue to the leaves. Sugar, in the form of glucose, moves from the leaves through phloem tissue to the roots. Transport of water and glucose gradually slows in the fall as plants prepare for the deep sleep of winter. As these liquids thicken in both directions in the plant’s conductive tissues of xylem and phloem, sap forms. Sap formation is another important buffering mechanism to help protect trees during winter. Hence, sap harvest for maple syrup production occurs in the winter months. Sap harvest is a sticky process in that you want maximum syrup production without permanently damaging the trees. (Absolutely yes! Pun intended!)
When plants are allowed to harden off gently through periodic and gradual temperature declines in fall and early winter, they are protected from damage. Without a gradual hardening off period, tender plant tissues can be damaged, if not killed, by an early sharp frost as they are not yet ready for winter. This is why weather forecasters often give early hard frost warnings with instructions to cover outside garden or flower bed plants overnight. Even classic late-summer or early-fall planted cold-crops as broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, kale, and other greens are vulnerable to such frosts without proper protection.
There’s many truths Christ has for me to learn in suffering. Many of these lessons go against what I’d like or want to happen with my life. They require the death and falling of my green leaves of self-assurance and the drying-up of the roots of my own strength. One lesson example is that my determination is now dying and cold, a sharp contrast to what it used to be. Yet, I think I’m learning that there’s a lot of sweetness (sap, if you will) that comes to the top of one’s life in words and choices when I let myself be changed by God in suffering.
Suffering is changing my mindset from “what am I going to do today?” to “what does God want to do in and through me today?.” Trust me, that’s not an easy lesson to learn, but it’s sure an essential one. King Solomon captured this idea with People make plans for what they will do, but it is the Lord who leads them in the right way (Proverbs 16:9 EASY).
Another important lesson I’m learning is “your weaknesses and limitations are a perfect match for God’s power” (L. Pryor)1. I can be a very slow learner, especially with those lessons I don’t want or like. As evidenced by this soil scientist still trying to learn some of the basic principles of living for, with, and through Christ fifteen years into this winter…
Yet my tender and long-suffering God continues to faithfully teach me truths as I live though this long winter. Just when I’d deceived myself that I’d finally learned to value winter, I find myself starting almost all over again in fighting for contentment and taking every thought captive as unto Christ in these gray, cold days of the wilderness of cancer. All the while, I’m desperately praying for a dear one who is entering that same wilderness of cancer. (Would you please pray for my friend? Thank you.)*
One of my mentors through books and tapes is Elisabeth Elliot. One of her oft-taught truths of “with acceptance comes peace”2 rings through my head over and again most days. She held hard to this principle of the discipline of acceptance of God’s will through many long hard winters of loss and grief. And her response, along with others, such as Joni Eareckson Tada, clearly display the importance of accepting winter in my life as the gift that it is. God gives me the opportunity of receiving this gift in obedience or rejecting Him in arrogance.
It’s up to me whether I choose acceptance or arrogance.
A truth for all seasons is this – none of this is about me.
It’s always all about Jesus.
Jesus is my hope of glory for all days, all wildernesses, all pain, all grief, all loss, and all people.
There’s always hope because there’s always Jesus.
*God knows my friend’s name and her needs now and coming in the wilderness of cancer. Only He can bring good from all of this, just as He’s promised to do.
*In case you missed reading “Revisiting Winter Part 1”, here’s the link for it:
written by (and edited) and copyrighted to Beth Madison, Ph.D., 2026.
Soul Scientist 
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