Snow!

I was awake at 3:30 this morning helping my littlest one untwist the blankets from his legs and resettle. On my way back to bed, I stopped and looked out the window to see if it happened to be snowing. The picnic table on the deck looked a little brighter than usual in the darkness. Was it just frost? I turned on the porch light – it was snowing!

I’ve been impatient for the snow ever since the last of the leaves blew out of our trees here. I love the snow. I got that from my dad. I married a man who loves the snow and we have children who love the snow. It’s a good thing I live in Alaska.

A few years ago, I found a children’s book by a man who has since become one of my favorite writers: Uri Shulevitz. The book is titled, “Snow” (which is why I picked it up) and honestly, I would quote the entire book right here if that wasn’t illegal in about three different ways. But I will tell you the story, because if you’re even a little bit interested, you’ll catch a glimpse of God as He passes through it.

The story starts with a grey day – grey skies over grey rooftops in a grey city. But one tiny snowflake falls and a boy out for a walk with his dog sees it flutter to the ground. “Snow!” he declares. Passersby on the street and his family at home all greet his exuberant announcement with squashing skepticism. It is, after all, only one tiny snowflake. And then there are two tiny snowflakes, but they melt when they land. The TV and the radio both have pronounced that there will be no snow. And then, my favorite part:

But snowflakes don't listen to radio,
snowflakes don't watch television.
All snowflakes know
is snow, snow, and snow.

And the story goes on as the snowflakes continue to multiply until the streets, the rooftops and the skeptics are all covered with snow and the grey city becomes a glittering white fairyland.

I have wondered, if I had been among the grownups passing by the boy as he looked up at a seemingly empty sky and shouted, “Snow!” would I have been one of the skeptics? With all my heart, I hope not. With all my heart, I want to live by faith and not by the grey that can be so much easier to see.

The Apostle Paul understood how much perspective can limit or reveal the colors that are there for those who will look. He was under house arrest in Rome when he wrote the letter we now know as the Bible’s Book of Colossians. Despite his confinement, he urged the Christians of Colosse to revel in the freedom God had paid such a high price to give them. He wanted them to stop listening to the rule-makers and the naysayers and start living by the faith that had opened their eyes to real life in the first place. Paul wrote,

So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ – that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective. (Colossians 3:1-2, The Message, emphasis mine)

 

It’s all about perspective.

I want the birds-eye view that comes through the lens of faith.

As I write this, the snow has stopped falling. The sun has burned a hole through the clouds and is pouring out onto the whiteness below. I would have liked a few more inches to fall. But if I look toward the east, I see some hint of dark skies and maybe the potential for more snow. I’ll hold out for it, snow-lover that I am.

Ambushed by a God who sometimes hides in a children's book,

Kimberly

(Photos from this afternoon's walk)