Just a couple of days before the Thanksgiving holiday, I was driving to my afternoon job when the heavy clouds in the sky began releasing soft white snowflakes, dancing through the air and falling to the ground so far below. Most people wish for a white Christmas, but snow wasn't even on my mind that Monday before Thanksgiving.
I am usually not a fan of snow, mostly because slick, icy roads have placed me in frightening, dangerous driving conditions in the past. I hate being cold and having to bundle in layers just to walk outside. When snow begins melting, with patches of the dead, dry earth making the ground look like a shoddy, poorly stitched patchwork quilt, I dislike the messy appearance it leaves behind.
But late that night I stepped into my kitchen and gazed out the back door. The roads had not become hazardous. The deck and ground were covered with a beautiful, soft, powdery white snow that made the night seem still---so still that I caught myself holding my breath carefully as if I might inadvertently disturb it. So still that it seemed the world had fallen asleep, as if my worries might fall asleep, as if peace could simply take over and comfort our broken, hurting world for even just one cold, wintry night.
And I breathed a silent prayer---
reminded that He who is creative enough to design no two snowflakes exactly alike,
is creative, wise, and caring enough
to handle all my problems.
The Soothing Stillness of Snowfall
The barren ground lies beneath
a quilt of purest white.
The earth spins on its axis,
yet seems still this wintry night.
The holy hush, the sacred quiet,
the clean earth fast asleep.
peals the bell tower's chiming ring.
The sky seems splashed with watercolor
paints of white and gray.
The shimmering white on the ground at night
casts a glow as light as day.
I gaze across the silent land, feel the cold against my skin.
I breathe in the sight of earth's sins bathed in white,
and my soul is soothed again.
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