Down where we live it doesn’t snow much.  When it does, we love it, well, most of us.  The kids hope with the snow comes a snow day away from school.  Most folks never lose their wonder at snow’s beauty and its nature of covering the most unsightly sights.  Even a junkyard takes on a beauty not its own when snow falls and covers the old cars.  Snow! Snow is a transformer of the ugly to the beautiful.

Lewis Carroll had Alice in “Through the Looking Glass” describe snow to her kitty this way.

“Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes, Kitty?  How nice and soft it sounds!  Just as if someone was kissing the window all over outside.  I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, and that it kisses them so gently?  And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ’Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’  And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about – whenever the wind blows – oh, that’s very pretty!” cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands.  “And I do so wish it was true!  I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.”

When the old storyteller looked for a name to describe a young girl of purity and fidelity he chose “Snowhite”, the essence of goodness. Humans, sooner or later, have to face the fact that deep down they are pretty ugly.  Some are so bad that the psalmist wrote, “Surely the human mind and heart are cunning” to characterize them.  Jeremiah said in chapter 17 that “ the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure”.  Jesus said that out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander (Matt. 15:19).  In Psalms chapter 64, the psalmist observed  that the heart was deep when it committed evil.  So, sure enough, we humans have a heart problem.

It is hard for humans to stay in concert with God. But we can and that is the beauty of His design!  His grace, greater than the oceans as the song goes, reaches us. We could be on the other side of the universe and He would be with us, even there.  His grace, the blood of His own dear Son, given for us who were recently in a pig pen. Like the snow covers the ugliness of the world it falls upon, so the blood flowing from the Prince of Paradise covers the ugliness of our sinful selves.  He was delivered over to death for our sins (Romans 4:25).

So, the next time you are blessed to be in a snowfall, take a deep breath of the clean, pure air and enjoy the new fallen beauty and be reminded of His grace and its transforming power. Several years ago I wrote a poem about snow. I leave it now, with you.

Coverings

I love the winter when it snows,

The icy polar wind that blows.

Razor-sharp, snowbreath air,

Icicles hanging everywhere.

Snow slipping softly to the ground,

Covering all in a pure white gown.

Snowfields glittering, gently lie,

Sparkling diamonds to the eye.

Winter Wonderland so bright,

Shines, like a crystal palace, to the sight.