A gentle snow is falling tonight in my part of the world. It is a shoveler’s delight and a child’s disappointment. Light and fluffy, it is easy shoveling but difficult, if not impossible, to pack into a snowman or a snowball. Before the night is over weather forecasters say we’ll have accumulated four to six inches.
    At night you can only see the falling snow as it passes through the beam of a nearby streetlamp. But, if you stand outside, you can feel it strike and melt upon your face. You can see it cover the lapels of your coat and feel it go down you neck. Inside the house I take off my stocking cap. It is covered with rapidly melting snow.  
    Sitting by my window I see it slowly cover the ground hiding a discarded bottle here, a blowing discarded wrapper there. Slowly the world is transformed. It becomes “clean”, “pure”, blanketed in white. Earlier, while I shoveled my sidewalk, I thought about something the prophet Isaiah said. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” (1:18, my emphasis)
    A winter’s night. A gentle snowfall. A glimpse of grace. Amazing, eh?