“God thunders marvelously with His voice;
He does great things which we cannot comprehend.
For He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth’ …
“Have you entered the treasury of snow?”
Job 37:5-7; 38:22
This year, the good Lord gave me snow for my birthday.
We came north for Christmas, ready to put a hard and crowded year behind us, celebrating with family and gazing on a more wintery wonderland. Alas, we arrived to dry ground, hazy sunshine, and the chipper voice of the local weatherwoman, promising clear skies straight on ‘til New Year’s. The phone forecast echoed her distressing refrain.
Happily, though, neither had reckoned with the Lord of all creation, who knows a sincere, unspoken prayer when He hears one.
The day after Christmas is my birthday, and dawn revealed that (with apologies to Pascal) the season has its reasons, which reason cannot know. The ground was white, and the snow kept plunging down.
A man can think, gazing on falling snow. Listening to the crunch of his own footsteps, or just standing, shivering a little, watching the little feathers of frost race each other down from the clouds, low above. I was gazing on my footprint, which always seems a little bigger or smaller than I think it should, and looking back at the tracks I’d made on the driveway. But, even as I watched, the clear outlines of my feet were blurring as flake upon flake came down on top of them. In a few minutes, the tracks would be gone completely.
It being my birthday, I was thinking some of those thoughts we tend to think as we grow older. Has my life been well-lived? Has it made any difference? Any lasting difference? Will anyone remember me, after I’m gone?
Probably no one here, for very long. As Thornton Wilder points out in The Bridge At San Luis Rey, only the most famous last beyond the fading memories of those few who survive us, and perhaps knew and loved us best. Soon enough, they, too, will pass, and no one will remember us with any more depth or understanding than you or I have of our own great-great-grandparents.
At first glance, that sounds rather depressing, knowing we will, in Wilder’s words, “be loved for a while and forgotten.” But, he adds, wisely and more hopefully, “the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them.”
And watching the accumulating snow erase the thin marks I’d made on the snow that preceded it, it struck me as curious – and wonderful – that the Love that made me, knowing how soon my small life will be forgotten in this world, took great care to ensure it will be remembered in the next.
One of the things snow is most famous for is the unique identity of every flake that falls. They may blend, straightaway, into the great white way, but while they live, each is absolutely one of a kind. Why would a God invest such individuality into a creation that will so soon melt away?
He must set great value by those singular whisps of ice. How much more so, those created in His own image?
A man can do a little creating of his own, amidst all that snow. Something in the stuff calls to my well-hidden inner sculptor, and given the chance, I scramble to mold a monument to ice ingenuity before the sun exercises its destructive erosions.
I’m not much for rolling human size snowballs around a yard, and the snow where I go is rarely substantial enough to support grandiose ambitions. So I long ago settled on miniature snow creatures for my constructions – and even those are no small accomplishment, considering how fast-fading are the elements I have to work with.
Funny, how hard we work to give life to something that will so quickly pass away. And how much pleasure we derive from seeing what we’ve made, even as it melts before our eyes. What must it be like for God, breathing His life into our souls, watching us come into this world and grow old in what must seem – even more to Him than to us – such a very short time?
It makes no sense … unless He delights, as snow-molders cannot, in knowing that what He’s so lovingly crafted will live on, long after the materials He’s set us in are gone.
A man can do some thoughtful praying, watching all that snow come down. In that reverent hush – that almost holy silence – one feels so gently, irresistibly invited into the Conversation.
“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow.”
Think of it: every snowflake falling: another sin, covered by His grace. So many sins … so much grace. So very much covered – simply, quietly, beautifully – by that blanket of purest white.
“Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow
Now wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.”
Stood in the falling snow a while today. Thought a bit, created a little, prayed some. Reflected on a few of the great things my Creator does – things, for the most part, I cannot understand. But can surely begin to appreciate, when I take the time.
Walking back to the warmth of the house, I felt ... washed. Refreshed. Renewed.
I was dreaming of a white Christmas. More than happy to settle for a white birthday, after.
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