Looking Down Is Only One Way to Look

Winter is not my thing.

In fact, I'm sure I have been heard to say that I hate winter.

And, what I hate about winter is snow.

Snow is cold.  It's a nuisance to scrape, shovel, and drive over.  It makes simple things like walking to the car dangerous.  It makes getting to work sometimes as hard as the entire work day.  It brings letting your teenager borrow your car to new heights of terror.

And yet, looking down is only one way to look.

The other night, I had a bit of a duty to perform in my community.  That's how I was looking at it, anyway.

So, I pulled myself up off the couch and out of the comfortable scene of my immediate family watching a movie while enjoying popcorn and hot chocolate in my cozy living room, pulled my boots back on, and headed out.

I could so easily have just stayed there, enjoying the movie, enjoying my family, enjoying not moving a muscle, enjoying the delicious, rich, cinnamony cocoa my husband had concocted.  It would not have occurred to me that I was missing out on a single thing.

But as I walked up the sidewalk toward my church building, I saw that, inside my little nest of a house, I would have been missing a lot.

Two feet of snow had fallen, recently enough to be fresh on trees, lawns, and bushes, but long enough ago that it had been shoveled out of my way.  Twilight was falling.  Pinks, blues, and lavenders played on the air like fairies skating.

The beauty of my surroundings hit me full-on.  It was like being transported into heaven.  The mountain ahead of and above me reflected the sunset behind me.  The trees planted twenty feet apart along the avenue stood like sentinels in a cotton candy world. 

My heart soared upward, expanded outward.  My eyes tried to take in the glory of my surroundings.  But there was so much beauty all around me that I knew I could never--even if I had an hour to gaze at each spot--see it all.  I had to walk swiftly through it, get to my destination.

I took in as much as I could, my soul in a state of joy, my thoughts prayers of gratitude.

I thought about God having stirred up that wonderful scene for me and few others to see.  I thought about Him having done that whether or not I came out of my house and saw it.  I thought about all the marvelous things He must do, just because of the kind parent, masterful artist, and creative being He is, that His children may or may not notice, and certainly cannot fully appreciate.

I thought about the many things parents do for their children, just to create a lovely environment for them--like smocking a blessing gown, decorating a nursery, writing or singing a lullaby, fussing over a birthday cakes and menues--that the children cannot even begin to comprehend.

Just out of love.  Just because of who they are and what they want to create out of their love.

I thought about the hot chocolate my husband had lovingly created, enhanced, and enriched for us, when something lesser would have done just fine.

And I felt uplifted, enraptured, thrilled to be a small part of it all, a part of this world, where so many things are lovely, where so many evidences of beauty, grace, and love abound.

My living room where my family huddled together in warmth was a good place to be, too, but I felt shock at what I would altogether have missed, and even more shock to think that I would never know or sense I had missed a thing.  The enormity and complexity of the earth and our lives and God's love and plans for us filled me with something that, in that moment, made me a better person and transported me outside of my usual small circle into something great and vast and spectacular.  So much is here for me.  So much more than I could ever see, or do, or witness, or take part in, or be.

And, even in my thrall, I mourned that I can only be in one place at a time, and only enjoy each moment once, and that they pass by swiftly, and are gone, whether I am looking or not.

And I thought, what sense does it make for such greatness to be shown to so few, last so few moments?  There must be a way that such moments are captured.  There must be a place for everything to go as it passes by.  There must be a place for such moments to be relived, a place where time is endless and so can our enjoyment of its wonders be.

That God would create all that beauty, even if I were the only one looking, or even if I didn't look, told a story of such love, such greatness, such devotion to His work, that I was changed.

And I think, after this, it would be a sin to use the word "hate" when I speak of winter, or snow, or any other part of the breathtaking and few moments that are my life.