The last couple of weeks or so here in the U.S., people have shoveled, scraped, and trudged their way through enough ice and snow to last the rest of the year.
But as we take a magnifying glass and look at a single snowflake, we’ll see that they really are fascinating little miracles, and so is Christ’s life in us.
Just like precious pearls begin as something ordinary–a grain of sand, snowflakes also begin as something just as unpretentious–a dust particle, a piece of volcanic ash, or sea salt.
As it falls through the atmosphere, each particle forms into a clear ice crystal, its individual shape and size determined by the various conditions each particle encounters as it falls to the ground, like the altitude, temperature, and humidity.
The one thing all snowflakes have in common is they each have six sides or branches.
Each of us is also born with an ingrained imperfection, that is, our sin nature. As we grow, the conditions we encounter, like the family we grew up in, the experiences we have in life, and our own personalities determine the one-of-a-kind person we become.
But our sin nature continues to act as an irritant, wreaking havoc in our souls.
“’Come now, and let us reason together,’ Says the LORD, ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
Isaiah 1:18
God compares our sins to scarlet and crimson.
This word for scarlet – shaniy – refers to a maggot-like insect called a “coccus illcis” which feeds on the leaves of evergreen oak trees. The dried bodies of these insects are used to make a deep red, or crimson, dye.
Our sin acts like those parasitic creatures, eating away at our joy, our souls, and our lives.
(Another factoid I found while looking up the definition of shaniy: the urban dictionary says it’s “a psychopath with demon eyes, this little creature lacks the skill of being nice, she is a very demanding person who is hard to control sometimes, she has the capability to stab someone if she wanted to; her favourite word is **** off.” Does that sound like our sin nature or what?!)
The Lord tells us that though we have been stained with the blemish of sin, He will make them white as snow.
So what makes those former pieces of dust, ash, and sea salt, and our sin, white?
As the snow crystals, or snowflakes, fall to the ground and begin to gather together, the light shining into the snow gets scattered around inside and is reflected around all those unique six-sided snow prisms and the light that comes back out appears white, and the imperfections are no longer seen.
The Bible refers to the number six as the number of mankind, of incompleteness. Just as the one commonality among snowflakes is that they have six sides, we all have in common our imperfect humanity. Without Christ, we are incomplete and impure.
But as we receive Jesus Christ by faith, He becomes a part of us (the number 7 symbolizes completeness), and we become a part of His family, joining together like a snowdrift high on a hill. His light shines into us and is filtered back out through the prism of our character, purifying our hearts and making us white as snow.
It’s amazing to me that God made snowflakes as a microscopic allegory showing us our need for Him. It’s as if He calls to us in the whisper of a tiny, almost secret world and says, “I know all about your weaknesses, your frailties, your sins, but the power of my love can overcome all that!”
We have all come through different and unique backgrounds, circumstances, sufferings, and joys, and the shape our heart and mind have become through our own uniquely-designed life allows Christ to shine through us in the extraordinary ways He’s chosen just for us and the lives around us.
So the next time you have to shovel snow or scrape it off your car, remember God’s love for you through Christ, and how His crimson blood turned our souls white and pure as snow. And remember, too, that the more we come together as one body and one heart with God’s family, the more His light shines in and through us. And doesn’t the world need that right now?
God bless,
with this image of Chris Fields and Miss Baylee Almon that was taken, unbeknownst to him, on April 19, 1995, the day of the Oklahoma City bombing.
