Job 38:22 Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?
Snow is starting to pile up as I sit down to write. Watching the powdery, somewhat wet snowflakes floating down to the earth is fascinating. There are small occasional flakes (flurries), larger ones, and huge flakes, which come down at varying rates of speed as the day progresses. Our yard was bare this morning but is now covered in a beautiful white blanket several inches deep. Snow covers the holly bushes outside my window, but the green foliage manages to poke through the covering. This storm would be a typical event in the Northern USA, but it is not so routine in my town in North Texas.
Cities, roads, and drivers find difficulties with the snow. Roads are treacherous, schools are closed, and sometimes, the snow and ice may shut down power lines, leaving many without heat.
But snow also brings blessings! In the mountains, the winter’s snowpack produces water storage capacity as it melts each spring, bringing water to the cities and irrigation in the desert. Many farmers welcome it for the moisture produced to get crops started in the spring. The Almanac lists five benefits of snow in the lawn and garden. Snow delivers nitrogen to the soil, insulates plants, protects against temperature fluctuations, provides winter mulch, and adds beauty.
A snowstorm can quickly transform the landscape. Snow overlays the city’s dirty streets and trash cans with beautiful white. The normally bustling streets are almost eerily quiet. In yards and the countryside, trees that have lost their leaves now have a white jacket clinging to their branches. God decorates the pine trees in white, and they can become sparkly in the sunlight. Nature produces its own Christmas trees. Snow clings to shrubbery. The wide array of snow pictures available demonstrates the pleasure and visual enjoyment that viewers experience.
The most fantastic beauty is that which is unseen with a casual glance or even a studied gaze at the snowscape. The famous astronomer Johann Kepler described the snowflake as coming “down from heaven and looks like a star.” He observed and tried to explain why snow crystals had six corners. He concluded that there had to be a “formative faculty” causing this hexagonal pattern.
Later, Hallet and Mason discovered that snow crystals will form long, thin needles and columns between -3 to -8 degrees centigrade temperatures. Plate-like crystals are formed between -8 and -25 degrees, and stellar and dendritic crystals form around -15 degrees. Relative humidity caused different growths and shapes in the snowflake.
The modern explanation of hexagonal symmetry is that the molecules in the snow crystal possess high structural symmetry called hexagonal close packs. But scientists are still looking for Kepler’s “formative faculty.” Could it be that this “formative faculty” is God?
Wilson (Willie) Bentley (1865-1931), a scientist who was a believer, was fascinated by snow. He discovered that all snow crystals have six similar branches, and very few had only three. Every snowflake he investigated was different. He learned how to use a special camera with a microscope. He created a complex system requiring him to work rapidly to photograph a snowflake before it melted. He found that cold, wind, and moisture variations produced distinct, differently shaped snowflakes. In 1925, he wrote, “Under the microscope – – every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated – -”
In 1931, Bentley published the book Snow Crystals, which contained 2,453 of his pictures of snowflakes. You can view some of them by clicking on this link.
“Bentley learned that no two snowflakes are exactly alike because all ice crystals—shaped like simple plates, bullets, needles, solid or hollow columns, dendrites, or sheaths—are hexagonal. As they descend from the clouds, they ride air currents up and down for an hour or more through regions of differing temperatures and humidity that leave their marks on snowflakes’ growth and shape. Given how they form, it is improbable that two complex snow crystals will end up exactly alike.”
Bentley gave a concluding statement about snowflakes. “With profound humility, we acknowledge that the Great Designer is incomparable and unapproachable in the infinite prodigality and beauty of His works.”
Snowflakes, with countless variations in design, are an astounding example of God’s amazing creativity. Notice the use of the word “snow” in Scripture.
The garment of the “Ancient of Days” is described “as white as snow.” (Daniel 7:9). Cleansing from sin is pictured by David, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:7). Isaiah preached, “though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow.” (Isaiah 1:18). Christ’s raiment on the Mount of Transfiguration was portrayed “exceeding white as snow.” (Mark 9:3). At the empty tomb of Jesus after the resurrection, the angel had “raiment white as snow.” (Matthew 28:3). When John saw Jesus in Revelation 1:14, “His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow.”
God created and designed the snowflake. He uses “white as snow” to describe the Lord’s raiment. He also uses “white as snow” to describe our condition when we are cleansed from sin by the blood of the Lamb. Have you been washed in the blood? Have you been made whiter than snow?
Trust Jesus today. If you have already trusted Christ as Savior, give thanks that you have been washed “white as snow.” Then, claim continual cleansing from the promise: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9).
Dale,
So beautifully written and expressed.
Thank you
God Bless~