| "Let
it Snow" By Jonathan Riedel,
Newaygo United Church of Christ
Purify
me with hyssop and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow Psalm
51:7
Winter
can be a draining time for many of us. The
cold bites through our clothes, leaving us vulnerable to disease and ill temperament. The thawing and refreezing of slush and lice
throws our balance and challenges our abilities to get to where we most need to go. Its early darkness encourages us to sequester
ourselves into our houses, which sometimes leaves us feeling isolated and depressed. Winter in a temperate zone is always an
unpredictable time so those among us who like well-laid plans and speedy delivery find
ourselves learning once again that our world does not work according to our standards of
speed and organization. As an always
recovering control freak, I find winter to be a draining season indeed.
Yet
nothing soothes my spirit as much as softly floating snow on days when I do not have
somewhere to go. I enjoy watching it cover
the brown grass, the leftover leaves, the skeletons of trees, and the scattered litter
that blew down the street I live on. After
enough snow falls and the light falls just so, the trees glitter and glare, the earth is
swept clean in white, and the air hang onto silence.
The night sky deepens into an inky peace that is rarer than the darkest
amethyst. The world has somehow been purged
of its ugliness and seems to hold more of the beauty it began with, a beauty that God gave
it in its first moments.
I
know that still beauty wont last. It
will be marred by car tracks, foot prints, and salt sludge soon enough. But the memory of that beauty haunts and reminds
of what we are meant to be in Gods eye. The
Psalm I have quoted above is one attributed to David.
The superscription above it tells us that David wrote it soon after he had
been confronted by the prophet Nathan about the affair he had with Bathsheba. This affair was a particularly messy one; David
not only broke his marriage vows (not a new problem for David) but he also had Bathshebas
husband Uriah killed so he could easily marry her to cover up an unintended pregnancy. He had, as it would be fitting for a king, made a
royal mess out of his and many peoples lives. He
also believed, as is typical of kings and other powerful people, he could make it pretty
enough for no one to notice.
God
did and sent Nathan to confront him. Once
confronted, David, to his credit, recognized he had been caught and made no excuses for
his behavior. He apologized. He accepted the consequences of his actions. He begged for healing. He asked for a chance to start over. He asked to be given a clean start, to be made
whiter than snow.
I
am sure that the people of the Bible knew of snow even though their climate was semi-arid
and nearing the warmth of the equatorial regions. Snow,
however, was something that covered the mountains and was unmarked by human footprints. They also knew it was the source of the water that
kept their land fertile when the spring thaws sent fresh and clean streams seeping down
the mountainsides. This snow easily became a
symbol for all that was clean and fresh about the land God gave them; it began a sign of
purity, a sign of unstained relationship between the God who gave and created and what God
had created. To be called whiter than the
snow was something to be aimed for, something to be desired when it came to their
relationship with God.
It
is something that we should aim for as well. To
be whiter than the freshly fallen snow. To be
as clean and as unstained as new snow under the night sky.
Thanks be to the God who sends us this snow to remind of what we should aim
for. Thanks be to God whose love restores and
cleans us, no matter what mishaps, sins, and mistakes we have made. Thanks be to God who refreshes us like fresh water
flowing down a spring-fired mountainside. For
all those things to be thankful for, I say, we should celebrate Gods gift of fresh
and clean snow. So let it snow.
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