As White As Snow

Last week we had the most beautiful yard in our neighborhood. Pure, white, picture-perfect. Well, at least our yard was as pretty as anyone else’s. The seven-inch blanket of snow that descended onto our street provided a sparkling covering that concealed weeds, bare spots, aging bushes, rocky soil and other horticultural flaws.

Changed from a landscaper’s nightmare to a winter wonderland, all at the drop of a snowflake.

The Bible offers a similar observation about snow. If we’re honest, we’ll admit our lives also display weeds, decay, and other undesirable qualities. We might regret having them and even try our best to hide them from others. But the all-knowing God sees them. Not only does He know about them, but He also extends the offer to purify us from them. “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow’” (Isaiah 1:18).

There’s one important difference between natural snow and spiritual “snow,” however, as a glance out my window reveals: Most of the snow in our yard has melted; deficiencies again are visible. Although hidden for a time, they were there all the while.

When a person commits his or her life to Jesus Christ, however, their sins are not just covered up, to be unveiled again one day. The Bible talks about complete change, not superficial concealing of faults.

As someone has wisely observed, God loves us just as we are – but loves us too much to leave us that way. Through the working of His Spirit, our journey with Him involves a lifelong process of total transformation. As the Bible assures us, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Political Correctness and Climate Change

While shoveling about three inches of “global warming” off my driveway on Saturday, I was thinking again about this matter of climate change. I’m a strong believer in climate change – in a couple of months, winter will change to spring, followed three months later by summer, then by autumn (or fall), and then, lo and behold, winter again.

In Sunday’s newspaper, a petroleum geologist wrote a thoughtful, factually supported column challenging the whole global warming consensus, noting that if anything, his research indicates a mini-ice age might be more likely. Wow! Of course, such reasoning isn’t politically correct for the group-think scientific community, or the political sphere for that matter. He’ll probably be defrocked, or whatever they do to dissident scientists. Maybe they’ll take away his Periodic Table of Chemical Elements.

President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address last week, affirmed his belief in climate change, but not by my definition. This winter notwithstanding, he’s loudly pounding the global warming drum. If the President says so, it must be so, right?

Not to keep beating a dying global warming horse, but I remember a couple of years in the ‘70s when the severe winter – sub-zero temperatures and blizzards – had almost everybody worried an ice age might be in the offing. In fact, I’m convinced that’s one reason “Roots” became the highest-watched TV miniseries of all time. Its story line was compelling, and it was well-acted and produced, but besides that, it was too cold that year to do anything else.

So in the midst of the hysteria, my trust in a Creator God comforts me. Seems to me that if He was wise enough to create the vast universe, He certainly must have anticipated the combustion engine, population growth and other factors supposedly linked to “global warming."

An Inconvenient Cold

Have you noticed how little has been said lately about global warming? Everyone is so focused on warding off the cold, they’ve forgotten about how warm it’s getting!

In recent weeks I’ve clipped articles about record low temperatures and snows that have stricken many parts of the world: Unprecedented lows in Florida; unusually heavy snow snarling all modes of travel in Europe; the heaviest snow in 70 years in Korea and other parts of Asia. There even was measurable snow in Houston, Texas on Jan. 6, and last time I looked, that city’s not part of the Snow Belt.

At the risk of sounding reactionary, I’m having a hard time warming to this whole notion of global warming. In the ‘70s, sensationalists were warning about global cooling, and a search of the Web will direct you to some credible sources who argue that is still the case today.

When Al Gore’s documental film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was released in 2006, many began to fear the worst. The film provides ample data, but as any good debater knows, you only use facts that support your position. I’m starting to wonder whether this “Truth” fits more into the so-called “big lie theory” – the bigger the lie, and the more it’s repeated, the more likely people are to buy into it. (Remember the Y2K hysteria?)

That’s not to say we shouldn’t be concerned about the environment. In Genesis 1:28, God commanded mankind to, “fill the earth and subdue it.” He directed us to be responsible caretakers of His creation, not unappreciative guests. I endorse recycling; cleaner, more efficient use of energy; and other reasonable ways of treating “Mother Earth” kindly.

But we’re here to worship the Creator, not the creation. After all, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it…” (Psalm 24:1).