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Job 38:22 Have you ever visited the treasuries of the snow?

Snow is such a curious thing. It has a strange and stirring beauty about it. What was God thinking? It all seems to point to him in ways that stir me with incredible wonder. It all starts with a particle of dust floating aimlessly in the atmosphere. A tiny, insignificant speck of dust. That speaks of you and me. From dust we came and to dust we return. God made us from the dust of the earth and before he found us, we were probably wandering aimlessly, taken wherever the wind would blow.

A stunning, artistic and beautiful thing takes place in the upper atmosphere with that speck of dust, let me explain…

The Biblical number for God is 3. Our extravagant creator created a trinity of trinities at the very moment creation came into being. In the first line of the Bible it says “In the beginning (TIME) God created the heavens (SPACE) and the Earth (MATTER), He created time (past, present, future) space (height, length, width) and matter (solid, liquid, gas) and he is not bound by any of them, he’s outside of our creation. He manifests in three persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he shows types and shadows of this in scripture and in creation. Take water for example. We are made up mostly of water. Without it, we die. Water consists of three particles and manifests, like God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), in three forms:  liquid, steam, and ice.

He has an infinitely creative and brilliant mind; he sees a speck of dust (us) floating in the atmosphere and then that dust is surrounded by water (God), and they're frozen together.  A snowflake forms and if you’ve seen one up close, you know it’s a work of art. Like us, no two snowflakes are the same.  As they begin to crystallize and take shape, they form triangles (three/God) and hexagons (six/us), the numbers for God and man in the Bible, respectively.

The final shape is a hexagon which represents man and is easily measurable from each of the 6 points but a snow flake is a fractal made up of smaller and smaller reproducing triangles. You can't measure every edge down to a molecular level, it’s immeasurable. So when dust and water freeze together, the immeasurable triangles inhabit the measurable hexagon, the creator inhabits the created. The infinite inhabits the finite. Just like what happens when a fallen man is apprehended by an infinite God who dwells deep within.

The Hebrew word for snow has three letters and each has a numerical value. The first is 300, the second is thirty and the third is three equaling 333 and that word appears three times in the New Testament and twenty-one times in the old. Three times in relation to our sins being made white as snow, three times leprosy white as snow, etc.

Snow falling from Heaven speaks of God's undeniably extravagant grace. It takes the ugly and makes it beautiful. I had some very friendly but messy neighbors down the road in North Carolina that liked to keep 3 rusted pickups and countless broken washers and fridges in their front yard. It wasn’t a great thing to look at driving by in Summer but grace being the great equalizer made it look stunningly beautiful in Winter with a few feet of virgin snow covering the blemishes. Years of abuse and imperfections are gone, if for but a little while.

You see, Jesus gives us beauty for ashes, he gives us grace. What kind of King would leave a kingdom? A throne? A position of ruling legions of angels? To leave his Father in Heaven and come to earth and take on the form of humanity and be crucified by the ones he came to save? What kind of King sheds his blood to make us white as snow? Jesus did. God’s Spirit has brooded over you since the day you were conceived, when he formed you in your mother's womb and spent an eternity thinking of you, designing you. He sent his angels to keep you, sent his son to pay for your sins and his Spirit to whisper your name all in the hope that you would choose him.

A snowflake falls from heaven and the snow evaporates leaving the dust to return to earth just like our bodies will one day return to earth and our spirits will rise to be in his presence where he makes all things new, in a place that you can’t even grasp with your mind. No matter how beautiful you imagine it to be, you’ll fall short.

God’s grace is amazing. He, through Jesus made a way for us to experience eternal life simply by believing like a child. He couldn’t have made it any easier and that alone can cause the intellect to stumble. The criminal dying on the cross next to Jesus uttered a few simple words, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and he was given eternal life for simply believing Jesus was who he said he was. Case in point, each letter in the word snow has a few meanings but among them are: 1. Destroy 2. Wisdom. 3. Proud - to destroy the wisdom of the proud, which speaks of the story of salvation that causes many to stumble by its simplicity. He has made it way too simple for some to grasp or accept.

In Romans 1, God points out that we are all without excuse when it comes to believing in him because creation screams at the top of its lungs that there is a creative mind behind it all. It’s proof for those searching.

When a snow storm hit a while back, I remember the day well. I awoke to an eerie and beautiful silence in the valley below that I had not experienced before. Fresh snow acts as a sound absorber and in taking out the power grid, it took out the hum of the fridge and air conditioning units.  There was no hum of distant factories, there were no cars traveling - just silence. The house was cold with no electric heating, no computers, internet, tv - nothing.  Shortly after that, I heard kids laughing their heads off making snowmen, sledding and playing board games. It was a beautiful day as everyone marveled at the beauty surrounding them. The snow made us all slow down and it reminded us of what was important, and as usual, whispered to me about the beauty of the creator and how he lavished grace on us making us beautiful in his sight. It reminds us that the beauty of life is so transient and it should serve to remind us that all natural beauty fades quickly.

Snow is a treasure dreamed up in the heart of God. It’s the signature of the artist on creation. Next time it snows, meditate on the unmeasurable love and grace he has for you. If you’ve experienced just a glimpse of the heart of God, you’ve been to the treasuries of the snow.

Steve Deal