The Snow

Since moving to a place that has winter, I've had to learn to adjust. I've had to learn to plan to a little extra time into my days so that my car has time to warm up and so that I have time to drive safely. I've had to become well acquainted with walking on ice. I've had to finally, finally come to terms with the fact that, sometimes, fashion has to take a backseat to function, and, just this week, I bought my first pair of snowboots--a sure sign that I've accepted that fact.

But all of that (save the snowboots, which I love) sound like negatives. What I'm really coming to learn is the excitement that comes with anticipating how pretty things will look in the morning, all covered under snow.

You see, last week I was getting really excited about the coming snow. I remembered my first year here when I hadn't anticipated the snow. I walked out of my house one morning, and everything was covered in snow. I just started laughing because it seemed funny for some reason. Maybe it just seemed unreal, like some big practical joke, but, when I looked around the neighborhood, all the houses were similarly covered.

Now I know to expect snow. I watch the weather online so that I know when it's coming, and I hope that, when snow is predicted, that it will be the kind of snow that covers, really covers everything. I hope for that because that's the really pretty snow. It's the kind of snow that makes even the ugly things--the bare trees, the garbage cans, the lonely parks where few people go--seem actually beautiful and transformed by the snow.

Well, I got to see that sort of snow the other day. I actually had to wake up very early to finish grading some papers, so I made it outside before any of my neighbors. And, it had happened. The kind of snow that covers up all the grass so that all you can see is a blanket of snow. None of my neighbors had started shoveling their walks; nobody had made footprints in the snow; no cars had driven down the street. And, in the glow of the streetlight, I could see snowflakes still softly falling down.

And, I was the only person awake to see untouched blanket of snow.

I looked around at a neighborhood that seemed completely different from the neighborhood it had been the day before. During the winters here, it's easy to see the un-beautiful, as the days are short with gray skies and naked trees, but, with the snow, all that's visible is what's beautiful.

I thought of this transformation later that day as I drove home from school, noticing how different everything looked, how the drabness and grayness had been changed overnight. And, when I thought about that change, I couldn't help but think about the meaning of the season we're in, moving towards Christmas.

Listening to the radio, I hear a lot of songs about Jesus, specifically about Baby Jesus, as this is the season we celebrate His birth. Honestly though, I rarely think about Jesus as a baby. I think about Jesus as an adult--performing miracles, suffering through His time in the wilderness, giving His greatest gift to us by His death on the cross. Those are the stories of Jesus that really stand out to me.

But to think of Jesus as a baby, that just seems, well, a little too human. To think of God in the form of a little baby just doesn't make sense to me. But isn't that what the whole story of Jesus is all about? Isn't it about the fact that Jesus had to come into this world, had to take on human form, had to be born just as we all must in order that He might die to give us hope, to give us the chance of being absolved, truly forgiven of our sins? It was only through this humanness that Jesus could do His transformative work on the cross, and it was only through coming to earth as a baby that any of that work could happen.

And it is that transformative work on the cross that gives us hope. I think of that as I look around at my snow-covered neighborhood and see the beauty of the snow that covers the ugliness of the bare trees. And, I have think that I, too, am somehow covered because of Christ's death on the cross. That even the ugliness of my sin, even the empty places of my heart, even the stubbornness of my soul--that all of these things are made beautiful, filled, soothed--by the transformative work of Christ's death on the cross, without which we would all stand bare like trees in winter, eternally longing for something to fill our branches.

When I think about it like this, it's all very simple. In this season of Advent, we simply await the birth of our Messiah, simply hold onto the hope of atonement which is already ours. Looking at the snow, it really is no mystery that all can be covered, that all can be made beautiful.