I pull my robe around me against the chill, tug the window shade up to let in the morning sun — and gasp wide-eyed at the scene before me.
As a native of the California coast, it wasn’t until I moved to Hamilton, Montana that I experienced waking up to the first snowfall of the season. Sure, I’d driven “to the snow” before, but this was different.
The snow came to me.
It had settled quietly in the night, blanketing the world in pristine white. Gangly dried weeds turned to intricate sculptures. The abandoned, burned out shack next door magically morphed into a charming cottage.
All was peaceful. Sill. Lovely.
It dawned on me — snow is the great equalizer. Charred shack and fancy new home, weed and well-kept shrub … all are draped with the same gift. All changed to something much lovelier.
The gospel comes to us like that. Like snow.
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. — Isaiah 1:18
It’s no accident that God made snow white. White, the color of purity. Of righteousness. Utterly clean, without a speck of defilement.
Here’s the good news about Jesus, in a nutshell:
You are more broken than you know, and more loved than you can ever imagine.
The gospel is the answer to that deep sense of shame you’ve carried. That feeling of exile. Like you’re not good enough, like you can’t get into the club, like you’re lost.
Someone had to pay for all our mess-ups. Someone had to take care of our enormous, impossible debt. Someone had to find us.
That someone is Jesus.
Like snow, the good news of salvation by faith in Christ makes us clean. It covers our nakedness and our mess. And it makes us all equal.
Last night, I was planning on raking the rest of the dried and rotting leaves in my yard, left over from a gentle autumn.
Then I look outside this morning and my jaw drops. Again. The world is covered in white. My chore is unnecessary. No striving needed here.
My mess is covered. My little corner of the world is all good.
Bare tree limbs, so stark and plain the day before, are transformed into lacy works of art. Nakedness is clothed. Ugly becomes beautiful.
Snow transforms the landscape; the gospel transforms our hearts.
.
Our mess. Our shame. Our tattered fig leaves. These all become irrelevant in light of what Jesus has done for us. And every time a fresh snow falls, he reminds us of this glorious, crazy truth:
You can’t make a mess too big for me to cover with My righteousness. And you can stop trying now.
I hope I always respond with joyful wonder to a fresh snowfall. More importantly, I hope I always respond with joyful wonder to the gospel.
It’s ridiculous and impossible, you know. That God would pay the price he did to buy us back? I can’t wrap my mind around it.
But sometimes my soul catches a glimpse of the great, big, wide goodness of God. Sometimes I experience a gospel-sighting.
Moments like that are worthy of a wide-eyed gasp, a smile from ear to ear, the breath held for a moment, a whispered thank you.
If the season’s first snowfall is worthy of wonder, how much more the gospel?
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