Words of Grace – Feb. 27, 2014

Of all the things that we treasure most snow doesn’t seem to be at the top of the list. “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?” the Lord asks, in Job 38:22.

The God who thunders so marvelously with His voice, does great things “which we cannot comprehend” (Job 37:5). It is God, and not the weatherman, who says to the snow, “Be thou on the earth” (v.6).

Snow is often used in the Bible to illustrate spiritual truths. For example, we read in Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, and let us reason together,” saith the Lord,” though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”

Psalm 51 is David’s prayer of confession which he offered to God after he had fallen into sin. “Wash me,” he pleaded in verse two, “and cleanse me from my sin.” Later in verse seven, he cried, “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”

It is not the snow that washes and cleanses us, as the man Job realized. “If I wash myself with snow water,” he wrote, “and make my hands never so clean” (Job 9:30) he would still be unclean on the inside.

“Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?” the hymn writer asks. And another hymn encourages us to pray: “Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”