snowfly

“Like the coolness of snow at harvest time is a trustworthy messenger to those who send him; he refreshes the spirit of his masters.” – Proverbs 25:13

I love the snow. I always have. Growing up on the ocean coast of New England, we didn’t see much of it. A good snowstorm happened maybe once every 4-5 years. We got a good bit of icy rain (and the accompanying school closings) but it just wasn’t the same. We longed for a good two feet of snow. (I am not sure if we ever actually got it.) So you can imagine how thrilled I was the first year I lived in Michigan, and we had so much snow that you had to jump down two feet from the sidewalk into the road – and you were walking next to 4 foot high banks of it on occasion.

It is snowing today, and the quiet hush that comes with it does wonders for my soul. As the noise of the world outside is slightly cushioned by the snowfall, so the noise in my soul quiets just a bit as I sit with a cup of coffee, curled up under a blanket, and simply watch the snow fly. I love this moment. It’s as though the world, like one enormous snow globe, has been turned upside down and shaken; and now it is still, and upright again, and nothing moves but the snow. And it is beautiful. May it be so with my soul… no matter what shakes it.

I looked up snow in the Bible today, just to see what God had to say about it. I found all the things you might expect to find about our sin being made whiter than snow by the blood of Christ… (black + red = white) – but I also found this proverb, and I like it. At first what captured my imagination was simply the picture of snow falling (preferably at the end of harvest) and the beauty of it, the welcome nature of the changing of the seasons, the promise of the coming holidays – but then it started to sink in. “Like the coolness of snow at harvest time is a trustworthy messenger to those who send him; he refreshes the spirit of his masters.”

A trustworthy messenger – someone who can be trusted to deliver the message he’s been told to deliver – refreshes the spirit of his masters. What do you think of when you hear the word refreshment? It’s something that quenches thirst or quells hunger, it satisfies, it makes you glad… it makes you feel the way I feel when after a long and crazy day, I get to sit down with a cup of coffee and watch it snow. And snow always comes with a purpose, whether we know what it is or not… browsing through all those verses, I read that “as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is My word that goes out from My mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

So I want to be like this snow. I want to be someone whom God finds refreshing. I want to know that I’ve been sent with purpose (whether I know what it is or not), and I want to be trust-worthy. I want to be someone who, when the world has been turned upside down and shaken, continues to fall softly with purpose into exactly the place that’s been marked out for me…

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