Where were you last Friday? Home, hopefully, right here in Fayette County or somewhere in the Atlanta area. What time did you wake up? Are you a weather nerd? Did you know exactly what was to be happening? Or were you somehow caught by surprise?
Yes. Right here in Georgia, the heart of the South, it was snowing. And snowing hard. And covering everything with a soft and thick blanket of white beauty. And I mean white beauty.
Did you look out your back door and back windows? Did you traipse out into your backyard? Did you take a picture on your cell phone? Now, you may be the premiere groundskeeper and neat freak. Your backyard may be pristine and totally non-cluttered. However, chances are that you have at least of few unsightly things lying around. Old deck chairs? Stacks of left-over lumber? More than one trash can? A stack of pots waiting for spring plants? Maybe even an old barbeque grill you haven’t gotten rid of since you got your new one?
Maybe some old bicycles? Maybe even an old lawn mower? Maybe an older shed with missing boards? Maybe places where your grass died? Maybe places where your grass died and weeds have taken over?
Chances are, if you were honest, your backyard on Thursday night would not have won your subdivision’s Yard of The Month.
But then it happened. The snow. The thick beautiful covering of snow. And everything, everything, was clean and sparkling and glistening. And perfect. Anything unsightly became a showcase of wonder and delight. Anything you might not have been so proud of was turned into a picture you would take and hang on your wall for the rest of your life.
I hope you caught the wonder of all that. I know those of you with kids were caught up in a frenzy of finding boots and gloves and scarves and stocking caps and big coats to go out. But hopefully, you too had a brief moment of soaking in the total beauty that a full snowfall gives as it’s gift.
As we share this thought together here in this article, we need to know that we are not the first to have done so.
In the Bible, snow often symbolizes the beauty and purity and renewal of God’s love and forgiveness. We have Bible verses that speak of snow to illustrate God’s cleansing power over sin. Snow is often used as a metaphor for God’s action in Jesus Christ to cleanse and purify us.
Just as snow covers the ground and all unsightly objects, God’s forgiveness through the cross of Jesus covers our gross sins and shows us to be clean and pure.
Here are a couple of the Bible verses that make this point. They show the transformative power of God’s forgiveness in Christ and how it changes us despicable sinners into beautiful children of God.
“Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow.” Isaiah 1:18
“Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” Psalm 51:7
In our world of division and strife at so many levels and in so many arenas, what usually happens is that we all want to prove ourselves to be right. We all want to defend ourselves and show that we are the good ones. We want to argue to the hilt that we are better, and that our thoughts and actions are superior to others.
Here’s what we need to do instead. We need to look to God’s Will and God’s Word. And in so doing, we will be forced to see, acknowledge, and confess our own failures, faults, and shortcomings. We will come face to face with the reality that our own sin is not only ugly and unsightly, but is separating us from God, from others, and even from the ones we love.
However, here’s where the metaphor of snow breaks down when it comes to God’s beautiful covering of love and forgiveness of our ugly sins. The snow covering the junk in your backyard is only temporary and comes to a relatively quick end, especially here in the South. The good news, the Good News, is that the covering of God’s love and forgiveness of your ugly sins because of Jesus is repetitive, over and over and over again. And finally, as a forgiven sinner, you will have eternal life because of your firm belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Oh, yes, Dear God, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
And all God’s people said, “Amen!”
