Mike’s Musings …                         A Very Quiet Blanket

   This past Friday into Friday night was the first measurable snow we have seen in this area since last winter’s snow. There is something incredibly peaceful about snowfall. There is not much sound to the falling of snowflakes. As you watch them fall, especially with the smaller flakes, yet an immeasurable abundance of them, it does not take long to find an inch or more covering the ground. At times, you think it will only be a skiff of snow, and when you awake in the morning, several inches greet you! Even with temperatures still below freezing, the snow seems to melt away with the brightness of sunlight and you find the eave spouts dripping and allowing the ice cycles to form. That is part of the quiet blanket of wintertime.

   The memories of good times in the snow are pleasant comforts. One such memory is the “Blizzard of 1978” when my dad and I traveled the thirty-five miles north of Marietta, OH to Pennsville, OH to rescue Grandmother from her “winter wonderland.” The water had frozen and the pilot light on her furnace kept going out. We broke through snowdrifts going and coming; each one higher than the car we took. We never saw another vehicle on the road throughout the trip, and fortunately had no troubles. (That is until I returned home with Nancy and Jeremy two days later and hung up my car just a block from our driveway!)

   When I walked to my home office this morning, (a building that is separate from our house) the snow crunched beneath my feet and shattered the silence that seemed so evident at first. There was no wind. The stillness of even the trees seemed to present itself with commanding force, just as the clarity of the sky and the brightness of the sun. It was as if no creature of God’s wondrous creation would dare disturb this quiet blanket of magnanimous glory! I did not want to walk farther and felt as though I had invaded God’s privacy as I had to go onward to my work.

   I mused on God’s own words, “Be still, and know that I am God.” How dare any man to break that silence, that majesty, that declaration of His existence? And then I mused on how many will hear His silence in such scenes but will not hear His spoken word that can save their souls (Romans 1:16; James 1: 19 – 27). Both His silence and spoken word (Hebrews 1:1-2; 2: 1-4) are deafening to those who will give earnest heed! To ignore them is to ignore Him and His omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipresence. Indeed, we need to “be still and know that He is God” and do so by our careful observance of both what He has done and what He has said!