Musings on a Snowy Sunday Evening

By Robin G. Jordan

Snow has been steadily falling in my part of western Kentucky since around 6:30 AM this morning. Fields, trees, yards, sidewalks, streets, and rooftops are now covered with a white blanket of snow. I am always amazed how different the world looks—pristine and unsullied.

The beauty of the snowscape is fleeting. Bird and animal tracks will soon mar the white expanse. The snow on the roads will turn to gray sludge where the sun and the highway department’s salt did not melt it. The snowplow will heap piles of dirty, oily snow on the sides of the road. The ugliness of the world quickly reasserts itself.

Snow for me is a reminder that we as followers of Jesus Christ are called to live in the midst of a transitory and impermanent world. Like the snow, we have our moment and then are gone. The Scriptures tell us to make the best use of that moment—to seek our neighbor’s good, to “abound unto every good work,” to “work that which is good unto all men and especially toward them that are of the household of the faith, to walk in good works “which God afore prepared,” to bear fruit in every good work, and to “be rich in good works.”

This is one of the things that I find most winsome about Biblical Christianity. We are encouraged to be compassionate, considerate, forbearing, forgiving, gentle, generous, kind, loving, merciful, patient, peaceable, selfless, truthful, and trustworthy—to be the embodiment of the Golden Rule, that is, doing unto others what we would have done unto us. This, of course, is not the whole of the Christian faith but it is a part of it.

When one visits certain web sites on the Internet, one is left with the impression that Christians are an ill-tempered, quarrelsome lot. They are quick to find fault and ready to take exception. They cannot pass up making a gibe or scornful remark. It is not surprising that a non-Christian visiting one of these web sites would come away with the impression that Christians are not different from other people. Indeed they may be worse.

In this Advent Season and in the coming Christmas Season and New Year we may want to take time for prayerful self-examination. How do we come across to other people? Are we living according to the teaching of our Lord and the Apostles? Are we bearing the fruit of the Spirit?

I can think of a number of good reasons to undertake such a self-examination. I cannot think of one good reason not to.

Grant, O Almighty God, that as thy blessed Son Jesus Christ at his first advent came to seek and to save that which was lost, so at his second and glorious appearing he may find in us the fruits of the redemption which he wrought; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God world without end.