Snow....whiter than snow

I woke up in the middle of the night, my normal middle of the night walk about to the room by the stairs, and I saw the snow. It had been lightly snowing when I went to bed, but this showed the beauty of a night of snow covering the land. This morning, the bushes had probably 4 inches, the birds are sitting waiting for me to clear off the feeders, and fill them, and the world is a beauty of snow tapestry...and I begin singing, "whiter than snow, yes whiter than snow. Now wash me and I will be whiter than snow."

 It's an old hymn,,,many probably have no clue but it's a beautiful song about forgiveness, baptism, sin and covering the sin. It's hard to cover something. I have tried to fix a few bloopers in my life and made it worse. It's hard to cover something and make it look perfect, as if it had never been. But snow, well snow covers and beautifies at the same time. Yes, we know there is mud and grass below, but snow covers. We can see the bumps and rising and falling of the landscape, up the snow covers and makes it look beautiful in its uniqueness. My life and my past have all the signs of fallen logs, misshapen bushes, fallen limbs from trees and forgotten ceramic decor. Somehow with the dirt and ugliness, I focus on them and see the starkness of their failure, not the possibility  of their redemption... and then it snows, and suddenly I see beauty, creativity, unique forms and fun pictures. What changed?  Snow. God simply covered it with snow. I see something totally refreshing. God does that with my heart, my past, my fears, my failure, my feeble attempts and my successes. 

It's kind of like chocolate covered pretzels. I am not a pretzel fan, but cover them with chocolate and give me the whole bowl. So let the snow remind us of the beauty God sees in us. How he cleanses us and though he doesn't remove some of the thorns forms our life, he creates a beautiful picture of forgiveness for us and we see how beautiful God can make our life appear when he dovers us with his forgiveness.