I get that some Christians don’t like snow. They associate it with bitter cold, backbreaking labor, dangerous travel and expensive heating bills. One day all these men and women will be fully sanctified, and will no longer make that mistake. Snow is not just an astonishing gift, but it is a gift with God’s own signature on it. My own associations with snow include childhood, which was a blessed time for me. They include snow-skiing, sled riding, hot chocolate, crackling fires, Steelers playoff football, Christmas, quiet, spotlessness, snow days, snow men, snow caves, even snow dragons. When I was a boy growing up at the Ligonier Valley Study Center it was not uncommon for the students, the staff and their families to light up a few Coleman lanterns, clear off an acre of snow and enjoy ice skating on Mr. Campbell’s pond late into the night.
Those are all great reasons to be moved by snow. Every one of them would be just as potent if the snow itself were simply innumerable copies of each other. None of those blessings listed above require that each flake, from every snowfall, every neighborhood, every year, be a distinct, unique creation unlike any other flake that has ever fallen. That is God showing off. That is God winking at us. That is Romans 1 in a warm, white blanket. Why does He do it? Because He can. Because He is not the God of either/or but the God of both/and. He is the profligate God, doing it exactly right precisely by overdoing it. He is the God of excess, of extravagance.
And He is the God who is beauty. I confess that I am no expert on beauty. I know enough to know that “Beauty is in the eye of the behold” is just as dumb and likely just as dangerous as “We all have our own truth.” Defining beauty, however, is where it gets tough. One cannot measure it in a test-tube. Beauty is elusive, ephemeral, quicksilver. There is one other thing I know however. The essence of beauty is the harmonization of complexity. It is taking the many and making it one. It is hundreds of instruments played by hundreds of musicians becoming symphonic. It is no wonder that the Creator of the universe, itself an immeasurable ode to the pleroma of God, would take the staggering diversity of trillions of unique ice sculptures and bring them together in unity, in the harmony of a tapestry in countless shades of white.
Is snow cold? Of course it is, but not as cold as the heart that can’t be warmed by it. Is snow wet? Of course it is, just wet enough to bring life to the dry and desert land of the hearts of those who don’t love it. Is snow heavy? Of course it is, just heavy enough to lift our downtrodden spirits. Snow is a good and perfect gift from our heavenly Father who loves us all together in the swirling move of the Spirit and one at a time in union with our Lord.