The Gift of Snow

Snow can serve a lot of purpose. It's enchanting and soothing. It's entertaining and playful. It waters the earth and quenches thirst.

It provides rest.

When you're raised in a place without snow, every day you're somewhere it falls is like a holiday. Snow is special. Now, I know its association with cold is problematic, but temperature doesn't change the magic of it. And perhaps the very idea that it requires a little distance gives it respect. We can ski or hike or build snowmen in it, but it also requires we keep it away from our warm skin in intervals.

Now that I live in a place that is occasionally covered in white, my perspective hasn't changed. When it snows, I am a child all over again.

Even though snow means work.

In the country, snow is an added inconvenience. Our animal's troughs can freeze and their bedding needs extra attention. Our gate freezes shut and the gravel roads become ice skating rinks. Sometimes we lose power and staying warm can be an issue.

But winter is a time to rest and snow is the enticement to enjoy it. When the world is blanketed in white and held quiet for a time, an otherworldly peace seems to settle in and we are given the gift of stillness, of respite.

Like children with permission to stay home from school, snow days are our opportunity to take a moment and breathe, to drink deeply from a place of wonder to see the hand of God at work, a hundred quintillion snowflakes at work, each uniquely symbolic of a Creator who cares enough to change our perspective just when we need it most.

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