Snow does strange things. I did not know this until I lived with it. I had gone to play in the snow periodically in my life, enjoying sliding down hills on giant tubes. I have had my share of misadventures with traveling in snow as well. However, it wasn’t until I lived in it that I began to see all the different qualities and characteristics it contains.
The first thing I discovered is that snow is very, very messy. I had not thought about what happens after the snowfall is over. I just saw beautiful pictures of pristinely white landscapes. In actuality, that part lasts for a very short time before the trees begin to rain melting snow and the snow gets dirty from a variety of sources. I have also found that people seem to either love it or hate it, there don’t appear to be many in between.
The most interesting thing about snow though, is that it acts as a great equalizer. In the forests around where I live, the pine beetles are destroying the trees at a fast rate. There are large swaths of brown trees among the green, but when the forest is blanketed with snow all the trees are beautiful. There is no longer alive or dead, everything is white.
Snow does the same thing to people. No matter who you are or what your economic circumstances are, if the roads are closed because of a snowstorm you are not going anywhere. We can strive, complain, or try to push, but when the snow is feet thick on the highway, no one is getting through.
This may sound like a stretch, but in some of these ways I see snow like Jesus. He makes circumstances and people that look like they are dead beautiful, and He does it in the same way, by covering us with Himself. He is also not a respecter of persons. It does not matter how much money we have, or how little. It does not matter how much we try to strive, work or push, none of us can make it through on our own. Jesus is the only way and He is waiting for everyone to turn to Him.
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'” John 14:6