On Snowflakes

We live in a culture that likes to believe that snowflakes don't melt.

Snowflakes happen when the impossible becomes a reality. Water gets colder than cold – colder even than freezing – yet remains in a gaseous state, a vapor. Then the air with which this super-cold gaseous water is mixed begins to stir, causing these little bits of fog to collide, forming a mass. Here, surface tension, or the inherent stickiness of water, takes over (the stickiness of water! Wrap your brain around that for a minute), and the mass of ice-like substance begins to act more like sugar and salt, attracting similarly-sticky molecules to form, of all things, crystals.

We see them all the time, and sometimes more of them than we might like. But when it happens so often, and seemingly so easily, we sometimes fail to recognize that snowflakes are a collusion of the impossible. They simply should not be.

Yet, here they are. And in large quantities. So much so that we take them for granted. So much so, that our society wants to pretend that snowflakes last forever.

The universe, however, has other ideas. Snowflakes may be beautiful and perfect, but they are often gone too soon. Writer Isabel Allende believes that the key to writing a best-selling book is to create a manual. People, she believes, are always looking for shortcuts, ways to make seemingly-impossible perfections endure despite the laws of thermodynamics, chaos, and decay. We want more than anything to escape any form of unpleasantness – physical ugliness, poverty, illness, or failure of any sort.

In fact, we've become so accustomed to success and prosperity, we see even the melting of a snowflake as some kind of cruel injustice. It was beautiful. It was perfect. How could God take it away from us just as it was bringing happiness?

Thoughts like these are often condemned as doubting, or lacking in faith somehow. Really, they're the opposite. For it is in the recognition of the beauty of God's gifts, and the desire to keep them with us for as long as possible, that we begin to appreciate them for what they are – manifestations of His love for us.

And when they go away, as all things physical must, we miss them as much for what they mean to us as for what they really are.

James warns us about taking too much for granted, holding on too tightly, thinking too highly of our ability to control time and space and life and the universe and everything. “Your life is a vapor,” he says in 4:14. “You are a mist that appears for a little while, then is gone.”

All snowflakes melt. Every one of them is eventually reduced to its component molecules, ripped apart stem to stern and washed away. They are transitory, temporary confluences of the impossible. But while they are here, they are beautiful, evidence of the handiwork of a loving God.

That same God loves you. That same God has given His Son so that His relationship with you doesn't have to depend on vapor crystals holding together. The universe can do its worst, but it cannot take God away from you, or you away from Him, without your permission.

And that same God has put you in somebody else's life to be their snowflake, to show them that God loves them. And as temporary as you might be, and as many of your own flaws as you might perceive, there is somebody in whose eyes you are a blessing, a perfect storm of impossible circumstances conspiring to make something beautiful. And when you go away, as you eventually will, you will be missed as much for what you mean to others as for who you really are.

So the invitation tonight is an invitation to come. Knowing that you won't last forever, make sure that your relationship with God is what it ought to be today. And if we can help with that in any way, we'd like to.

But at the same time, the invitation is to go. Go show off God's handiwork. Go be that blessing in somebody's life, confidently proclaiming the love of God and not just showing up and hoping they notice. Go be beautiful, before melting time comes.