It’s amazing how fresh snow highlights everything. This morning the dawn revealed a wooly-looking blanket of white outlining everything: rooftops, naked trees, asphalt streets, and a tricycle in my neighbor’s front yard.
The tricycle irritates me because the only reason it still sits cluttering up the scene is that the adults in the house no longer notice it when they come in and out their front door. Other trash also in the front yard is highlighted by the two inches of white that reveal the junk. This, too, is cause for another “Bless the Lord.” Yes! Bless the Lord, O trash and junk!”
I thank God today as the psalms encourage me to do. “Bless the Lord, O you works of the Lord, bless the Lord.” Sun and moon, dew and frost, ice and snow –yes, bless the Lord! The naked trees now wear a frosty dressing and for that, bless the Lord! The cars, too, show snow on their hoods and windows as they meander with more care than usual down the street in front of my house. The same people drive the same cars on the same days to work each morning at the same times. But, today there’s surprise snow.
My heart lifts all of this to the Lord and with the Church in every place and time, I, too, bless the Lord. But, today is a different kind of morning because dawn is not soaked up in shadows. The snow diffuses the light and lifts everything out of the shadows and the whole world is lighter and brighter because of God’s glorious invention of snow. “Bless the Lord, O you works of the Lord!”