Snow

Snow
“For to the snow he says, ‘Fall on the earth,’ likewise to the downpour, his mighty downpour.” -Job 37:6

 The Alabama gulf coast had a historic snow event last Tuesday. The previous record snowfall for Mobile was just over 6 inches in 1895. Daphne and Mobile got around 10 inches on Tuesday. Snow has always put me in a reflective mood, and it certainly did so last week. Here are a few of the things I thought about as I watched the landscape shift to white:

Snow slows us down. I got up around 7 AM on Tuesday and by 10 AM I felt like I had been up all day. I wasn’t tired. But I had been walking back and forth from one window of my house to another, watching in amazement as little white flakes fell from the sky. Time slowed. An hour and a half playing outside with my kids felt like five hours. Not because I was bored, but because I was taking in every little detail and every moment. Snow has a way of slowing us down – and we all need that from time to time. Psalm 46:10 encourages us to, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Snow reminds us who is in control. The Gulf Coast got more snow on Tuesday than it has gotten in over 100 years. It was a once in a lifetime event – one that God brought about simply because he wanted to. Job 37:6 says, “For to the snow he says, ‘Fall on the earth.’” If God can bring about a once in a lifetime snow – on the beach of all places – what can he do in your life?

Snow causes us to wonder. We don’t wonder much anymore. So many truly incredible things happen around us every day that we’ve lost that sense of awe and amazement. All of us carry a supercomputer in our pockets that contains all the collective knowledge of the entire world. We can go to the hospital and be cured of once deadly ailments in a matter of hours. We can fly in the sky like a bird for the price of a plane ticket. Yet we rarely experience a sense of awe and wonder. Snow brought that sense back for me. Luke 5:26 describes such an experience: “And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today.’”

I hope you enjoyed your snow day as much as I did and I hope it gave you some time to slow down, to reflect, and to praise the Lord for his wondrous works.
 
Your Pastor and Friend,
John Knox Foster