I just got back from two weeks spent at home for Christmas. Those two weeks were wonderful, beautiful, and refreshing. I am so blessed! To have a wonderful family, a loving church family, a friendly small town, and great friends is such a privilege. And to have wonderful friends and GLA Family to come back to after going home makes me doubly blessed! I think each time i go home i realize it more and more :-) I thought I'd share a little bit about my white christmas.
i arrived home to not-too-cold, absolutely-no-snow weather. i walked out of the airport in a sweater and my flipflops! I was worried that there would be no snow for Christmas, but with the prayers many, including the nannies at GLA who told me they'd pray we got snow for Christmas, we did get a dusting of snow on Christmas Eve. There was just enough to cover the ground, and then on Christmas Day it snowed even more.
There is something so magical about snowfall. It's quite amazing to think that before it drifts to blanket the earth, a tiny ice crystal forms around a particle of dirt and goes through a formation process, eventually becoming an intricate snowflake. i suppose it's a little like the way God forms us. He can take a simple, imperfect human being and refine and shape him or her into something beautiful. The process of refinement is not usually a pleasant or easy one, but through it we become stronger and purer. For a snowflake it doesn't take long to reach its completed state, but for people the process takes a lifetime - and even by then nobody's perfect. How much patience God must have!
The way in which it forms is not the only intriguing thing about snow. Have you ever stood in the middle of a wide open space blanketed in snow and just listened? The silence is beautiful. You can stand there while snow falls around you and feel like the only person in the world - just you and God. There's really nothing quite like it.
The grey skies are beautiful. The biting cold that freezes eyebrows and makes cheeks sting is refreshing (in small doses), and it makes me feel so alive. There's just something about being surrounded both above and below by white and grey that makes the world seem to stretch out in un-ending vastness.
Then there's the deep, cozy warmth of a wood-burning fire place that can't be imitated by gas or electric ones. I loved sitting by the fire and watching the glow of the red-hot ambers shift and dance to their private orchestra, or spending time with my family around the fire and simply being together.
I do love winter, and i think that i appreciated and experienced it more deeply because i knew i wouldn't see much of it this year. If you read this and you have snow, go out and marvel at the wonder and beauty of winter. It takes this process of dying to make way for new, fresh growth.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire. And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace; The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, And all the trees of the field will clap their hands. -Isaiah 55:10-12
