Last year, I don’t remember seeing a single flake of snow.  No snow days off of school for my kids.  No bundling them up in two layers of pants and shirts and socks, then piling on coats, hats, gloves, scarves, and boots to send them outside.  No scraping off the frozen clothes when they pile back in and then making hot chocolate and snuggling them under fleece blankets.

This year, it hasn’t been much snowier (so far), but yesterday the tiny flakes finally piled up onto earth cold enough to hold them.

Snow!!!

My kids ran outside as soon as they finished breakfast this morning to play in it.  When they were done, my oldest brought in “clean snow” for snow cream—a recipe we’d never tried before.

Me, I like snow outside while I stay inside.  I like to watch it fall, so peaceful and hushed.  I like the brightness of it, especially when it covers over the drab muddy browns and muted gray-green of a snowless winter landscape. I like the untracked snow, the kind before boot prints and tire tracks and melted slush.

I like the reminder of what Christ has done for us.

Such a simple beauty this Saturday morning: A reminder as clear to me as a rainbow in the sky showing God’s faithfulness to His promises.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow
(Psalm 51:7).

They used this hyssop (really the ezov plant) for ritual cleansing in Israel–for purification and the ceremony to pronounce a leper healed and made clean again.

We’re self-condemners so often—listening as Satan reminds us of past sins, beating ourselves up in our minds, calling ourselves all manner of cruel names: stupid, a mess, flaky, foolish, failure, idiot…

God is so much more gracious than that, willing to cover over our sins, able to wash us and redeem us, able to purify our hearts and heal us from the diseases that plague our souls.

This snow–mostly still outside, some melting in spots on my kitchen floor from where my children have trekked in from outside– reminds me of His powerful, cleansing grace, a “grace that is greater than all my sins.”

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King