Job 38:22

The Treasures Of The Snow

Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow? Job 38:22.

Today I want you to come with me into a wonderful treasure-house and we shall walk round and look at the treasures. It is the treasure-house of the snow. Perhaps you never thought very much about the treasures of the snow. You may have thought more of its pleasures, of the snow-balls and snow men you could make, and the sledge rides you could take. But its treasures are well worth looking at too.

1. The first treasure we shall look at is its beauty.

You go to sleep one night in a bleak, dingy world and you wake up next morning to find that the earth has put on its beautiful white winter dress. Last night the brown earth lay cold and bare, a few dead flowers drooped their withered heads, and the tall trees shivered as they waved their leafless arms. But today all is transformed:

The snow had begun in the gloaming,

And busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway

With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock

Wore ermine too dear for an earl,

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree

Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

(J. Russell Lowell, The First Snowfall.)

And not only are the earth and trees and flowers changed, but the ugly walls and houses which man has built have got their share of the beautiful white dress.

Then have you ever tried to look at a snowflake through a microscope? If you have you will have seen something very wonderful and beautiful, for each snowflake is made up of numbers of little crystals that take the form of six-pointed stars. Sometimes, when the flakes are very tiny, each one is a single star, but more frequently the little stars join together to make a flake. Nor are these crystals all alike. More than a thousand different varieties have been noticed. Some are quite plain like the spokes of a wheel, but in others the rays of the star are formed of the finest lacework. Each little snow crystal is like a perfect little flower which God has sent down from His sky-garden.

Now I wonder if you ever thought about the trouble God takes to make things beautiful. He need not have made the snowflakes so lovely. It would have been enough if He had made them useful. But He could not make them otherwise, just because He is God, and God is love; He could not have made them otherwise, because He wanted to give us joy. Everything that God makes is beautiful. He made the flowers, and the trees, and the grass, the moon and the stars, the blue sea, and the everlasting hills. It is man who spoils things and makes them ugly. He digs up the beautiful green fields and plants ugly towns on them, or runs railways through the middle of them, or covers them with heaps of coal refuse.

God meant our souls to be beautiful too, but we have allowed sin to spoil them. Yet they can still be made beautiful if we will give them back into His keeping to mold them.

2. The next treasure I want you to look at is the warmth of the snow.

Perhaps you think it is a funny thing to call the snow warm. You could have understood if I had called it cold, because you know how your fingers tingle when you try to make snow-balls. Nevertheless the snow forms a warm blanket for the earth. In the Psalms there is a verse that says, “He giveth snow like wool.” And snow is just like wool because it prevents heat from escaping. When it falls on the earth it helps to keep in the heat that the earth has absorbed during the summer-time.

Scientists who have made experiments have found out that under two feet of snow the temperature is forty degrees warmer than above it, and in cold climates farmers depend on the snow to keep the hard frosts off their sown crops. Underneath the snow beautiful flowers have been found growing that would have perished in much milder climates if exposed to the air, and up in the Alps some of the loveliest flowers grow on the edge of the snow-fields.

Little snowflakes falling lightly,

Little snowflakes falling whitely,

Cover up the sleeping flowers,

Keep them warm through winter hours.

Do you know

Why the snow

Is hurrying through the garden so?

Just to spread

A nice soft bed

For the sleepy flowers' head,

To cuddle up the baby ferns, and smooth the lily's sheet,

And tuck a warm white blanket down around the roses' feet.

I wonder what the flowers think when the snow comes on the top of them? Perhaps they think it is very hard to be shut away from the light. But if the snow didn't come they would never blossom next spring. And I think it is just like that with the hard things we have to endure. It is the difficulties we overcome and the hardships we bear that make the sweetest and fairest flowers blossom in our characters.

3. Another of the treasures of the snow is its power.

If you watch it coming down so gently and softly you may think it is one of the weak things of the world, and if you weigh a snowflake on a pair of scales it will not even make the scales tremble. Yet a snowstorm can stop trains, block roads, break telegraph wires, interrupt labor. And up in the mountains avalanches of snow can destroy villages, tear great rocks from their foundations, change the face of a mountain-side.

Now sometimes we are tempted to think we can't be of very much use and can't do very much good in the world. We are so weak and small, and the world is such a very big place, and we are tempted to give up trying. But remember it is each little snowflake doing its own part that makes for strength, each one falling in its own place without ceasing. And if the tiny snowflakes that weigh next to nothing can be so powerful, surely we can be of very great value if we put our weight on the right side.

4. One more treasure I want you to look at. It the purity of the snow.

Newly fallen snow is the whitest thing in the world. If you take out your handkerchief on a snowy day you know how grey and grimy it looks. But when the snow falls on a city street it does not stay white long. Soon it gets covered with soot, or mixed with mud and turned into slush, and then we get rid of it as quickly as we can by carting it away.

Now you remember we noticed that sin spoiled our beauty. Well, there is another thing it does it soils our whiteness. We are not long in the world before it begins to lay its ugly marks upon us. And those marks will never come off unless we ask God to wash them clean.

God can melt the dirty snow in our city streets. He can lift it up into the clouds and turn it again into beautiful white snow. And He can lift us up too and wash away all our stains and make us “whiter than snow”