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Old Snow

As a humid, 95-degree July day comes to a close, I am reminded of something I saw after the biggest snowstorm of last winter in Chicago. New-fallen snow is beautiful and bright white. When it's untouched, it looks so white, so pure. Then we start walking on it, driving on it, pushing it around with shovels, snow blowers and plows. Whatever that mixture is they put on the roads to melt the ice gets mixed in. That once pure snow becomes dingy, dirty, hard, crusty and anything but clean.

When Snowpocalypse 2011 hit, all of the Chicago area was covered in a foot or two of new-fallen snow. Many weeks after Snowpocalypse 2011, I still saw a giant pile of snow in one spot on my train ride home every day. But what used to be pure white, fresh and almost breath-taking was now black, gray, crystalized, hard and ugly. What happened? Human intervention. Time. And no more new-fallen snow.

The same thing happens in our lives. A fresh touch from God after a time of confession in our quiet time, a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit has us walking in the Spirit. Then life happens in this fallen world. And I start adding some sinful, fleshly decisions, words, attitudes and that fresh, white landscape starts looking less and less like new. If I am truthful, it goes from fresh, white and clean to ugly, dirty and sinful.

What should we do? How do we get back to that pure, white landscape? Go back to God again. Recognize, acknowledge and confess your sin to the Lord. Repent and be washed clean by a holy God.

Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall become like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

Hallelujah for the cross!

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