SNOW!

Photo by MRB.
Since Tulsa is covered with a beautiful layer of snow, I decided to repost ‘Snow’!!!
 
A Flake and a Smile (A poem by MRB).
 
‘Snow’, exclaimed the old lady 
With a dried apple face
And no teeth
 
A part of us 
Never grows old
 
It peeks through 
The wrinkled veil
A glimpse of who
We really are.                               
 
An old woman got out of her car in the Reasors grocery store parking lot, held out her hand to catch a snowflake and with a smile on her face said only one word, ‘SNOW’.  I wrote this poem in response to what I saw and heard.  Was this old woman thinking of hot chocolate and a warm fire, memories of her childhood?  Was she thinking about how snow makes everything beautiful?  How it covers all the garbage in a dark alley, it can even soften and smooth everything in an automobile wrecking yard!  But was she thinking about why God invented snow?  Did she ask Him?      
    
Snow makes everything beautiful.  It is like a love song from God saying, I love you and want to make you beautiful!
A scripture from Isaiah 1:18 says, ‘Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow..’  Scarlet is a brilliant red color.  It refers to the color of one’s sins that stands out in a shocking way, drawing attention to its intensity.  In this context it refers to one who is wicked, heinous, immoral, promiscuous or unchaste!  The worst! 
 
Yet God says He will make even these sinners ‘white as snow’!  That is because God is love, and ‘Love covers over (like snow) a multitude of sins’. 1 Peter 4:8. He wants to cover you!! 
 
But like snow, that only forms under certain conditions, for God to make your sins, ‘though they be scarlet’, white as snow, you have to accept his provision for sin.  Sin separates you from God!  ‘But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.’  Isaiah 59:2  And, ‘if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’ I John 1:8. We all sin.
But thank God, ‘He so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ John 3:16.  So the specific condition necessary for you to have your sins made ‘white as snow’ is to believe in His son, Jesus.  Then God who loves you enough to send His son to die for your sins, will make them white as snow.  Pure and clean, covered past, present and future never to be seen again under the beautiful white blanket of His forgiveness.  Just like the old hymn written by Robert Lowry in 1856: NOTHING BUT THE BLOOD OF JESUS
 
What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
Oh precious is that flow that makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus

Do yourself a favor and discover Tim Janis on youtube.com.  His videos are absolutely beautiful, and some are accompanied by hymns.  Beautiful Relaxing Music, Peaceful Soothing Instrumental Music!
 
Click on the following link for ‘Winter Morning Sunrise’.
https://youtu.be/qiSXFe1QVtY?si=qWS5ghKeChFcoizt
 
You may also enjoy one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickenson simply titled ‘The Snow’.

THE SNOW
It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.
 
It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain, –
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the west again.
 
It reaches to the fence, 
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil
 
On stump and stack and stem, –
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.
 
It ruffles wrists of posts, 
As ankles of a queen, –
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.