Transformed!

Church is canceled as is every other event in Charlotte this morning. An inch of snow is fallen and more is expected.... maybe at least an inch more! All people are urged to remain home and drink hot chocolate and only venture on the streets at your peril!  A Northerner for most of my life, I still chuckle when I see the dusting that shuts down a whole city. When we lived in Syracuse, we drove unless 2 feet of snow fell in 10 minutes. And we would drive in even that if we had snow tires. Here, just the threat of snow causes a run on toilet paper and milk, and news flashes explode 24/7 updating us on the possibility of snowflakes potentially being conceivable within the next 72 days.

An event is cherished in direct proportion to its rarity. It is true for snowfall, it is true for adult children coming home, and it is true for a day when no one grumbles and everyone smiles all day long. Diamonds are a girl's best friend only because her other friends are so common.


  If we can find a way to get Asherel's Christmas snowboard to a hill, we can even practice snowboarding.  While the streets are still visible thus nixing cross country skiing for now, snow is forecast to fall all day!!! It is possible, even likely, that I will be able to cross country ski in the moonlight, all around my neighborhood transformed to a winter wonderland.  None of us had to be anywhere today and the snow will all melt tomorrow. So today, we have nothing to do but look at the beautiful white layer that covers all the dead grass, and mud, and potholes and play for the few brief hours it will be here.

Which reminds me of why we have to die.  None of us appreciate what we have when it comes too easily and stays too long. It is only the things we struggle mightily to obtain, or that we only hold for a moment that we usually value.  I think if we saw Jesus' face every moment, as the Earth once did, we would just say, "Oh, ho hum, just that Messiah again. Show me something new!"  I am not saying this is right, or as it should be.... I am just saying that in my experience, it is the way it is. 

I sometimes wonder then how we will adapt to Heaven, where there is no crying, no mourning, no pain, no sickness, and probably no cellulite.  If we can't bounce perfection off of imperfection, will we become immune to it? I guess that is why we can only enter heaven with the spirit of a newborn babe- looking about at all things with wonder and delight. We will have to be transformed for sure because the humans I know, myself included, just could not feast on continual joy without finding something to complain about.

Perhaps part of the process of growing towards God is learning to find the wonder and delight in all things so that wonder and delight becomes an integral part of our makeup. Then,  when we enter the presence of God, we won't be squashed like cockroaches in the blinding light of Glory.

But for now, I will practice delighting in the uncommon and go frolic in the North Carolina snow. Twirling in the snowflakes and reaching out my hands to scoop up the wonder of the world transformed however briefly, I hope that a bit of my insides are transforming too.

1 Samuel 10:6
The Spirit of the LORD will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person.