I love this photo. I love it because there’s snow. This is the exact antithesis of my other great love, sunbathing, but there’s something almost magical about snow that I just can’t resist. I’m not the kind of person that wants to rush out and build a snowman or an igloo, or even lie on the ground & make a snow angel, I just like walking around in it, hearing that creaky-crunchy sound.

I love that you don’t know how deep the snow is and don’t know how far your foot is going to go in (my husband thinks I’m silly for wanting to take a ruler out with me to measure the depth, but I can’t resist having the ‘my snow’s deeper than your snow’ competition with anyone who will play). I get even more excited when new snow builds up upon old. That on the second day I can wake up to fresher, deeper, crunchier snow and walk the same roads with the same (maybe a little more) excitement and crunch as the first day.

Snow always reminds me of Psalm 51:7 ‘Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow’. I always find it amazing, humbling when I remember that the almighty God thought I was worth sending His only son to suffer an excruciatingly painful, humiliating death so that I could be whiter than snow. Slate wiped clean. A new beginning.

But this picture has made me think a lot recently and question my use of the ‘whiter than snow’ verse that we pray so often. Do I really want to pray that verse over my life (or others?) Do I need to be careful exactly what I’m praying for? When I actually look at what I’ve been asking for it suddenly doesn’t seem as attractive. I think I’ve often used it in a ‘prayer for forgiveness’ context. That because God has forgiven, I am now whiter than snow. This is an amazing, wonderful gift. Snow is a beautiful pure thing, but when it melts you’re still left with the dirty pavement below. When I forget the blessing of forgiveness and go back to things from the past, what am I left with, the dirty pavement?

When I am hurting, when I am struggling with God because He doesn’t seem to be answering my prayers in the way *I* want, what if He is actually just digging up the pavement? Going deeper. Removing the dirt. So when the snow starts to melt there’s something new, more of Him, more white snow beneath? What if in the times of pain and tears He is ripping things out to lay a foundation of white snow? No matter how hard, no matter how painful the pavement is to let go of, surely a foundation that is as white as snow will be infinitely better than what was there before?

I get that because He died I am saved. The slate is wiped clean. I’m as white as snow. But what if I’m still clinging onto the pavement? What happens when the snow starts to melt?

‘See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.’ Isaiah 49:16