The Snowflake

It snowed in Oklahoma last week, which was the cause of a great deal of delight at my house. The kids zoomed through their schoolwork and headed for the back room to don overcoats, stocking caps, and gloves. I ventured out long enough put a tray of extra birdseed in the front yard for my cardinals, juncos, sparrows, and nuthatches. Two pairs of bluebirds and a Jay scrabbled at the suet feeders with the woodpeckers.

I watched the kids build a mini-snowman (a snow-baby or a result of global warming shorter snowmen?). I watched them slide down the hill on a blue plastic sled and clobber each other with snowballs. Their shouting and laughing didn’t dissuade the birds from eating.

The snow fell in huge flakes. Soon the whole ground was covered and the branches of the trees and the bushes were frosty. The blowing snow against the dismal browns and grays of Oklahoma’s January were a welcome sight. It made me understand Northerners for a fraction of a minute.
No wonder they love it. It is beautiful!

Have you ever felt like a snowflake—just a one small person in the great span of eternity—just one diminutive drop in the great ocean of humanity—just one tiny part of God’s world? Oh, I have.

Snowflakes are formed when minute particles called ice nuclei pass through the clouds. As a particle tumbles in the super cooled moisture, it forms a six-sided crystal—radiating from the center. The sides add branches and buds that make the snowflake grow and change as it falls. Though each snowflake is small, flakes soon cover the ground.

I am like one of those snowflakes. My influence begins inside my home, with my own children and my grandbabies. The things I do and say affect my neighbors, my community, and my society. My influence reaches beyond my house to other homes. My influence, for good or bad, grows and continues past myself, past days at home washing faces and sweeping up messes, past soothing quarrels and folding dish towels, past cooking supper and changing bed sheets.

My home is a mission field and I serve God here. I represent Christ here. Some days I feel like I am being tumbled in cold places—buffeted by trials and weighed down by work and problems. Some days I feel small, fragile, and isolated. That is the time to spread my hands farther and be like a snowflake, helping to cover the world with the beauty of the knowledge of Jesus.

(Taken from What’s Good About Home 2007)