A Different World

Last night, when I went to bed, the first few little flakes of a predicted snow storm were just starting to fall. It really didn't look like it was going to turn into the significant event the weatherman was predicting...just a dusting, like powdered sugar, on the ground...a couple of tiny crystals in the air catching the light every now and then. Outside, the world was still a typical winter night, cold, dark, and dead.

It's a different world this morning. The view out the window is all white...clean, pure, amazingly white as far as the eye can see. I have to admit that the weatherman got this one spot on! Snow is still pouring down, even as I write. Sometimes, it's coming in bursts of rapidly falling flakes and at other times, huge flakes, big as quarters flutter down, taking their own sweet time to hit the ground. Minute by minute, it piles up, covering everything in a thick flocking of the whitest white there is. I went out to sweep the back door step a little while ago and the snow is so powdery and delicate, it just brushed right off with no effort. This isn't going to be good attack ammo by any means because it's too dry and soft to hold together in a snow ball.

Across the street, there is a house that burned up a few weeks ago. One minute, it was there, as it had been for about 100 years, quaint, old, stately and charming. I passed it that morning and never thought a thing about it or the people that lived there. A hour later, at the sound of sirens and shouting, I looked out to see that it had turned into a bonfire, flames shooting out the roof, already beyond saving. That quick... Fortunately, everyone inside escaped unharmed, at least physically, that is, but the house was gutted by the fire, leaving nothing but the bare bones of the structure, black and empty and sad.

This morning, however, the snow is covering up those blackened bones and the house is becoming white again. The charred tin roof is clean again. The yard full of dead branches and trash from the burning is hidden under the growing blanket of newness. The ugly is camoflaged by the beautiful. Just for now, the fire, the loss, the sadness, the reality is mercifully covered.

I had a whole year sort of like that house a while back. Everything I expected, everything I'd planned, everything I forcast for the future, went up in flames like that house. The kids and I came out of the experience alive, but only with the memories we carried out the other side with us. Everything else was gone forever. No growing old with my best friend beside me. No dad to watch the kids graduate from high school and hand me a tissue at their weddings. Nobody to argue with and make up with and sit in rocking chairs on the porch with as the fire flies came out at dusk. Life looked alot like that old house across the street...and it felt like it went up in flames about as fast.

And yet, even as the snow that is falling outside right now covers the dead bare ground and the black bones of a ruined old house, a similar miracle happened in my own life. Somehow, someway, God has slowly but surely covered the ugliness inside of me with a blanket of white, a comforting, pure, thick blanket that helps make everything look new again. Yes, I know that, underneath it all, the reality remains and some things can't be made over, but on those days when I start to look too closely at the black bones and see too much loss and too much sadness, the Lord lets loose another round of healing, sort of like shaking up the snow globe again, and His goodness falls on me once more. Sometimes, a whole shower of blessing I know comes from Him. Sometimes, little crystals here and there that just remind me that more is to come. Other times, big fat plops of joy that drop in when I least expect them!

When I remember that He is in control and, no matter what winter and fire try to steal from me, I WILL be o.k. in His timing, it's like that snow outside.

It's a different world...