When Grace Falls Like Snow

She notices the leafless limbs on our drive to preschool.

“Mommy, what happen to their golden gowns?” The twinge of  alarm in her voice interrupts the grocery list I’m scripting in my head. 

“Whose gowns?” I ask, trying to shift my focus from frozen peas to the four-year-old in the seat behind me. 

“The trees. They used to be so beautiful….” Maggie taps her index finger on the window and points at the oak-lined street beyond the glass. “Remember? You said God dressed those trees all fancy for fall. You said He painted them all pretty and golden to show off His…..His…….” My girl stammers, trying to recall her mama’s words. “His glimmers,” she finishes with a satisfied grin.

 I smirk as I recall last week’s discussion about Autumn’s beauty, and I swallow a chuckle as I relish my daughter’s paraphrase of the words we’d shared.

“Yes, God knows how to drape His world in glory, doesn’t He?” I reply as Maggie stares out the smudged glass, her eyes sweeping the bare branches that had created a canopy of color just days ago.

Her smile slides into a pout and she crosses her arms over her chest to punctuate her harrumph. “But those trees don’t look beautiful any more, Mommy. Now they just look…..” she pauses, searching for the right word, then meets my glance in the rearview mirror. “They just look naked !” 

I try to turn my grin upside down and return my daughter’s doleful gaze. I mumble something about seasons changing and then veer into the school parking lot, thankful that soon my van will be quiet and my tired ears can rest. I  bid Maggie good-bye and head home to translate that grocery list onto paper and tackle the morning’s cereal bowls still piled high on the counter. 

I’m elbow-deep in dingy dishwater when I lift my head and look out the window. The grass is laced with a glistening rik-rak of white. Snowflakes splatter the picnic table, cling to the swing set and frost the bowl of acorn stew hovering on the edge of the sandbox. I stand, mesmerized by the unexpected beauty. The trampoline looks sprinkled with powdered sugar; the tree tops adorned with strings of pearls.

While my attention was fixed on dirty dishes, winter had tiptoed across Autumn’s fading canvas and made her quiet debut.

I pause, soap bubbles dripping from my fingers, and wonder when it had begun to snow. Stealthily, silently, the world had been wrapped in a garland of white, and I hadn’t even noticed until I’d lifted my eyes from the daily grind.

The dishes still need scrubbing, the grocery list still needs scribbling, but I stand silent and watch as my backyard is transformed from brown to beautiful.

The wise words of this Texas preacher ring through my mind—“Nature is God’s first missionary. Where there is no Bible there are sparkling stars. Where there are not preachers there are spring times…  If a person has nothing but nature, then nature is enough to reveal something about God.”–and the snow reminds me of grace.

Isn’t this how grace comes? Surprisingly and quietly, when our eyes are fixed on our own grease and filth but God’s eyes are fixed on us.  

When sin has stripped us bare like November’s branches, when our own pride has left us naked and ashamed, grace waltzes in on the breath of Heaven and paints our barren souls with beauty. 

Not flashy and fantastical, not glitzy and glam, just warm and wordless, grace comes.

Like salvation wrapped in wrinkled skin slipping through a dark,wet birth canal on a star-lit night; like scruffy shepherds dropping to their knees beside a humble manager; like a bleeding woman reaching quietly for the tattered hems of a Carpenter’s tunic, grace comes.

And if we’re not careful we can miss it all together, our eyes fixed on the dust of earth rather than turned toward the windows of Heaven.

I dry those dishes and scribble that list and head back into town to collect my littlest girl. 

She skips toward the van, her chatter filling the air. “Mommy, Mommy, do you see the snowflakes? Aren’t they pretty? Aren’t they soft? They’re tickling my nose….”  

Her Rapunzel backpack slips down her slender shoulders as she hops along, her furry boots leaving imprints across the snow-dust beneath her feet.

Maggie spins happy, white flurries dancing with the fly-away strands of her tangled hair. Then she stops mids-stride and lifts her baby blues toward the canopy of trees that meet the sky. 

The bare limbs are wrapped in white; sunlight shimmering through the branches. 

“Mommy, the trees aren’t naked anymore! I think God hung sparkles on them while I was in school.”

My girl claps her hands together in sheer delight and opens her mouth wide to catch the fat flakes on her tongue. With a squeal, she swallows shimmers of frost right there in the middle of the parking lot on a Monday afternoon. 

And I stare at those branches draped in white above my head and thank God for hanging Love on a tree so my life can be adorned with grace.  Sparkling, undeserved grace.  

*linking with  Jen at Rich Faith Rising,Jennifer for Tell His Story, Beth for Wedded Wednesdays and Jen for soli deo gloria

 clip art credit: www.rgbstock.com