What Can a Snowstorm Tell Us?

Photo Credit: Adobe Stock

Well, I got up one morning last week and I checked my weather app so I knew how to dress for the day. Whoopee! I think or say or yell! Big snowstorm coming. I’m immediately transported to childhood. Hope there’s no school. I’m drawn to my childhood years. Gotta call pals for playtime in this gift of God – if school is cancelled. Ah yes!!! Schools are cancelled!! Such joy is beyond the Richter Scale. No numbers high enough can measure a kid’s happiness when school is cancelled. Or the trembling of the earth as thousands of parents  scramble to prepare for a ‘no-school-day!’ Now this is big time because by the time you get through the layers of bureaucracy like superintendents, principals, bus drivers, street guards, and maybe even City Council – who knows? – the announcement can be late. But for my childhood, when there was no TV, you had to wait for a phone call from the school. “No school today” they would say and hang up because there were hundreds of calls to make. 

Oh, those halcyon years! Snowstorms in northeast Ohio are plentiful from mid-December through February, sometimes earlier like the nationally famous one in November 1951, and often later like the one on St. Patrick’s Day in 1980. Our storms whip across Lake Erie and are nicknamed Alberta Clippers because they stir up in Alberta Canada and thunder their way with the heftiness of a Clipper Ship on the Great Lake Erie. I’m told that nothing can stop a clipper storm because the lake is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, only 62 feet in its Central basin and only 30 feet in its shallowest Western basin, a likely 210 feet in its Eastern basin. Surface storms love shallow bodies of water because they can force the placid surfaces to change quickly since there is not enough depth to hold down the monster of wind and snow. So, the wind has a great old time whisking over the expanse of this lake growling into the cities on its shoreline whipping up its recipe of wind, rain, and eventually snow which it has culled from the grip of Canada’s brutal winters.  

Don’t you just love the lore? Anyway, once the windy snowstorm hits Cleveland, its vulnerable city in a path from Alberta, we have a massive, wonderful snowstorm. We are a flat city at the shore and fairly inwards, too, spreading to the edges of several counties before the land becomes scenic with hills in every direction. 

Today we can predict storms for the most part but there was something mysterious and frightening about their advancement in the past. Our meteorologists of the past didn’t have all the technology we have today so we could not always prepare adequately for what came over the horizon. Yet, still, we can sometimes be surprised even today when a storm takes a sudden turn, or the ferocity is worse than expected. But a surprise snowstorm, without mishaps, can be a joy if you let the child in you go out to play. 

I thought of this the other day: surprises that can catch us unaware. Surprises that might sound threatening at first but can turn into God-given joy at the end. Let’s look at this from a scriptural vantage point.

Reflection

Let’s say you are Matthew, you know, the apprehensive tax collector whose eyes are all over the place as you look for possible attackers because, after all, nobody trusts or likes you. You might as well be the Grim Reaper at a New Year’s party. But one morning, you get up, go to work, and set about counting the coins dropped at your window and suddenly your sharp awareness sees a man watching you a few yards away. He points to you, and you ask: “Me? Why?” By the end of the workday, you are a follower!!! You’re on his team. Now that was a surprise! Like my sudden snowstorm. Only much holier. 

Or let’s say you are the famous Woman at the Well. You swagger to the well humming along but watching out for enemies because no one likes a home-breaker or a menial trollop. You come at noon to avoid the hecklers and gossipers. Lo and behold a Jewish man at the well starts talking to you, a Samaritan, about your marriages and you marvel that he knows all about you. You are converted!! You run to town and tell everyone about him; you are suddenly a missionary for his cause. You had awakened in the morning thinking of the chores to do and by evening, surprise! You’re a newly chosen evangelist for the message of Jesus! 

And what about Joseph? Simple guy. Hard-working carpenter. I figure he had four dreams all together that significantly changed the life of his little family. The first was to take Mary as his bride, the second was to get up “that night” and flee into Egypt because Herod is looking for the Child. The third was to get up and leave Egypt for Galilee and the fourth was to get up and on to Nazareth. Talk about sleepless nights! Think of yourself as Joseph. You would almost be afraid to go to sleep for fear another dream would have you off to another country! 

Each of these persons had sudden changes in their lives – very sudden and very changing!! Look what they did with them. They did much more than coasting down a sledding hill during a snowstorm.

How do I accept sudden changes in my life? Or sudden changes in my simple day? Do I appreciate that God will see me through any difficulties when I accept this sudden change? 

If there is reason to doubt my openness, I need to pray that I will accept the guidance our loving God and the Holy Spirit will provide when sudden changes appear in my day or my life. 

I’ll see all of you on our nearby sledding hill! Love to all of you, my readers and Anonymous Angels!