Something Beautiful

We’re stepping into a blizzard.  The wind slices through our scarves and coats, and finds the goose bumps on our skin.  It howls through the air and takes our breath away quicker than our first love.  The snow is tossed on the waves of the wind and smashes into our eye lashes.  And as we blink the ice furiously away, we wonder what the heck we’re doing living in Wisconsin?

Yet, there is such wonderment in a storm.  Such amazement in something as simple as a snowflake, for instance.

When I was a kid, my dad was bringing me home from my music lessons and it was snowing pretty heavily.  A couple of snowflakes glued themselves to the windowpane. I looked intently at them, trying to see if they looked anything like the paper ones I had made.  They didn’t.  They were so fragile...quickly dissipating when my finger touched the glass.  

I told my Dad, “God must have a big imagination.”

“Oh yeah?  Why’s that?”

“Because, if there are no two snowflakes alike, and there have been thousands of snowfalls this year, and millions and trillions bazillions of snowflakes that have fallen since the time Adam was created... well, God must have a big imagination to come up with no two snowflakes that look the same.”

Yeah, I know.  I was pretty profound for a kid.  =)

Snowflakes are fascinating.  They come in all different shapes and all kinds of sizes.  Some appear as delicate and dainty as my mother’s lace doilies and others shining as stars. Yet they are all similar.  

Here is what I’ve come to know... Each snowflake has six points, is made up of molecules of hydrogen and oxygen, and is symmetrical in shape.

Eating "dirt"  =)

But did you know that the ice that makes a snowflake collects around a particle of dust floating in the atmosphere? This tiny imperfection may be as small as 1/100,000 of a millimeter in size, but it has to exist for a snowflake to form.

In the same respect, the imperfections in our life has to exist in order for something wonderful and beautiful to happen.  Sometimes a “foreign invader” that crashes into our lives- like a terminal illness, an accident, a heartbreak- can actually turn into a source of blessing.

In Ecclesiastes 3:11 it says, "He has made everything beautiful in its time."  Only the Lord knows why we go through storms.  Only He knows your story from start to finish.  And He knows that you’re beautiful.

There’s an old Gaither song that goes:

“Something beautiful, something good
All my confusion, He understood
All I had to offer Him
Was brokenness and strife
But He made something
Beautiful, out of my life.”

When you encounter obstacles in your life, remember that they give you the chance to let God make something wonderful happen.  It will be beautiful.

Our backyard