Snow, Snow, Go Away, Come Again Another May

Jeanie Wilson was waiting tables on the far side of the Blue Water Cafe, but I could here her indictment all the way across the room and above the din of the noontime burger eaters. "It's the winter that never quits." Today is May 16th. It's cold. Sunny. And snowing. This last flurry looked like the "Dipping Dots" ice cream you can get at Valley Fair, but had way less appeal.

At the moment, I can look out my office window and actually see Fern's midnight blue Blazer parked a few feet away. A minute ago that car was but a shadow, a shade veiled by a curtain of snow. Will it never end?

Just this morning, as I drove in along the lakeshore and headed inland up the new Gunflint Trail I noticed a brighter shade of green in the crowns of the aspen and birch on the ridge above town. It looked like spring. It felt like spring. Now it looks like a view through a quilt before they put the front and the back on. Fuzzy, cotton fiber fill.

I wonder if this is just a little like the Israelites might have felt, wandering through the same wearisome desert vistas day after day with relentless meals of manna their only expectation. Is this a bit of what they might have endured, this longing for something more, this discontent with the monotony of what they had, the shortsightedness and thanklessness for their lives given the sameness of their daily experience?

I'm tired of winter. I'm sick of winter. I want azaleas and daffodils and gardenias and those big red and white flowering shrubs with the waxy green leaves whose name I can't remember. I want warm, sunny days. I want night delays and long, lazy days. I want fishing without automatic refrigeration! I want warm, did I say warm? I want ten million shades of green, and another ten million shades of blue, highlighted with yellows, and the occasional red and orange. Oh, and now I remember: camelias. I want camelias and tulips and wisteria and forsythia. I am just so sick of snow, and cold, and white, and gray.

But . . . snow, even in May, and cold, and white, and gray . . . are they not ordained by the Creator's hand for good? Has not the sovereign God of the universe, who does no wrong and delights to do good for his people, has he not by is own hand designed this day especially for me? His word says, "This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

This was Israel's failure, the failure to find and know the goodness and joy of God in the sameness of each ensuing day. They complained about the manna and rebelled at God's provision. They wanted what they wanted and they drooled for the scant greens that littered their enslavement. They pined away their blessing.

With whatever it holds, the period of time we call today embraces at least two praiseworthy qualities: the creativeness of God and the opportunity to yield to him. The author of Hebrews writes, "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." A few sentences later in chapter four he notes, "He appointed a certain day, 'Today' . . . ." Today, God is at work in the world and in his people to exalt Christ, to display the glory of his perfections, to do good to his people, to uphold the world in his hands and he upholds his word in our lives. Today, God gives an opportunity for us to respond with faith, surrender, obedience, and joy.

Honestly, I still want camelias and gardenias, but I'm not going to get them here in northeast Minnesota, winter or summer. What I will get, what you can get, any day, every day is the good grace of God extended in mercy through Jesus Christ. And I'll take that any day. In fact, as long as it is "Today," I'll take it every day, even if it comes with snow.