On the first day of spring, 1st September, 1970, it snowed where I lived, in the central tablelands of New South Wales. At about 500 metres (1500 feet) above sea level, winters at that time were “brisk”. Cool days, cold nights, some VERY cold nights, with frosts down to -12C, with accompanying frozen and broken pipes, (they were very soon lagged!) and fogs till midday (further from the river they weren’t so bad).
But it usually only snowed about once every winter, with snow falling on the hills around several times a winter, which was lovely to look at and the wind off it was woeful! This fall on the first day of spring was memorable in more ways than one to me. I had just come home from hospital that day with No 1 son, who also happened to be No 2 child. No 1 child, who was also No 1 daughter, had gone to stay with one set of grandparents, and would return in a week or so, to give me a chance to settle in with the baby.
The weather had been nice when I went into hospital to give birth, and it got progressively worse the longer I stayed there. In those days they didn’t rush you home. They kept you in till they were satisfied the baby was doing well, and so were you. So I had been there for a week, and the day I came home, it had turned cold. Really cold.
So that evening, I went to have a bath. We didn’t have a shower in that house, just a bath. So I settled off to enjoy this bath, had just soaped up, and the lights went out. My husband come in and said he had checked to see whether it was just us, but the whole town seemed to be without lights and power, and he would go out to the garage to see whether we had a gas lamp or similar I could use in the bathroom.
What seemed like an eternity later (it was probably only 5 or 10 minutes) but the water was getting cold and I wanted to get out, my husband came back in, and announced he couldn’t find the lamp, but it was snowing! I couldn’t care what it was doing, I just wanted to get out and dry and dressed!
Shortly after he left to see what else he could find, the lights came on again. I jumped out of the bath, dried myself off and dressed myself before the lights went off again. The power stayed off this time for three days….and our home was all electric except for heating. I felt a little better about life in general and come out to the living area where hubby was looking out the window. The snow by this stage was falling heavily and soundlessly. There was no wind. And it was beautiful. Just beautiful. We watched for a while as the world turned to white.
That was the heaviest fall of snow I have experienced in almost 50 years in the area. The phones were out, the power was out, both sets of grandparents were trying to contact us to say they couldn’t come to see us yet, the mountains between us and them were impassable. We were trying to contact them to say don’t try to come, you won’t get up the mountains. We finally had to resort to telegrams! We lived on sandwiches till the power came back on. I was breastfeeding so the baby was ok for food. We had heating, but nothing else. But we managed.
For twenty five or thirty years after that we went back to one decent fall of snow (not quite like that) every year or so, with several falls in the hills around each winter. The last fifteen of so years, the frosts haven’t been so bad, and the falls of snow are only every four or five years now, with maybe a fall of snow in the hills around every year or so. Things are changing.
But you know, thinking back about how beautiful the snow was as we looked out on it and how beautiful it was the next day, at least until it started to melt and turn to slush….. That falling snow, that pristine sparkling beauty, it really was magic. It looked like a fairy land. Everything that was mundane was hidden or transformed. Isn’t that what Jesus’ righteousness does for us?
We are worse than mundane. We are flawed and sinful. Our righteousness is as menstrual rags. We are unclean. Unless and until we are covered by Jesus’ imputed righteousness. He is perfect. He is sinless. He is the light of the world, that marvellous light. He is love, He is lovely.
Over two thousand years ago, He forsook what was rightly His, so that we, unworthy wretches that we are, may, through God’s grace, be His co-heirs in glory. His perfection masks our imperfection, so that God is able to look on us. He has redeemed us, saved us for His good works that we could not do without His living in us. And we, His followers, have turned to Him. We have repented, and He us given us new hearts, and made us new creations. He has covered us with His righteousness.
His perfection covers our imperfection. To God we appear as a pristine, sparkling snowfield, all shining white and beautiful.
Light of Christ 