People in warm climates are often thankful they do not have to experience winter. But one thing many of them miss is the beauty of a snow-covered landscape when ugly scars on the earth are covered over with a soft, white blanket of snow and everything outdoors takes on a new beauty.
Millions of tons of snow fall over large areas each year. It fills us with wonder when we stop to realize that all that snow is entirely made up of delicate, beautifully designed snowflakes, one of which might not even cover your little fingernail. And such beautiful designs! People who study and photograph them continually find to their amazement that no two are alike.
With few exceptions, snowflakes are always six-sided. Sometimes the six sides are flat and straight, but usually they have six beautifully designed arms coming out from a center circle having its own design. Each spear-like arm matches the others on the same flake, but no two flakes have been found that are exactly alike. A scientist who made photographs of more than 400,000 snowflakes showed in his pictures that this was truly so. Isn’t that amazing! No one but the Lord God, their Creator, could design so many.
Snowflakes form in the clouds, starting as tiny specks of dust surrounded by little drops of water that change into flakes as freezing air blows on them. As they fall many collide, changing the shapes from which they started and arriving on earth with sometimes less than six sides, or becoming long and narrow. But, together with the unchanged ones, each has its part in forming the snowy landscapes that attract skiers, tobogganers and photographers.
Even more important is God’s planning. The snow on mountains, becoming deeper with each snowfall, is held in the cold temperatures on these high places until hot summer months. Then a gradual melting releases snow in the form of water into streams and rivers to supply necessary moisture to forests, meadows, gardens, ponds, lakes and reservoirs in the lower areas — wise planning of the Creator of all things.
In the Bible there is a lovely verse which says, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:1818Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)). By “reasoning together” we learn that the Lord Jesus died on the cross to wash away our sins, and that by confessing ourselves to be sinners and accepting His offer to be our Saviour, we are saved.
If He is not your Saviour yet, He invites you to come to Him right now. He will accept you as one of His own, making your sins “as white as snow” in His sight.
ML-02/19/2012