Snow Day, Good Friday
It’s spring break this week, so I have had no reason to leave the house except to shovel snow.
Now, unless you live in my part of the world, a sentence like that would make no sense. Here, in Minnesota, it does. I just took 8-inches of spring showers off the driveway: Yes, it is beautiful, and yes, it is bound to be short-lived. By the middle of next week, it is likely that this will all be gone.
These were the days we lived for when I was a kid. I grew up in Wisconsin, so there are a few differences in language, dialect and culture, but even so, a good snow day is a wondrous thing.
I still remember the kids in my neighborhood quite fondly: Steve Armstrong, Wally Hillyer, Russ Meyer, Richard Richardson, Scott Mooney. A day like this always elicited a phone call: “C’mon over. The snow’s packy.”
Packy was that quality of snow that was perfect for snow balls, snow forts, snow men, and so on. It was not good for sledding. Simply put, packy snow packed together well and stayed packed together, and thus it is good for building stuff. This word has been used in Wisconsin for generations, but no such word exists in Minnesota. Even my wife, who grew up just 20 miles away from my childhood home, has no word to describe packy snow. Despite the language barrier, there’s no denying that the snow today is perfectly packy.
As Martin Luther once observed, in German, no less, “God is interested in a lot of things besides religion.” As I finished clearing the driveway, I uttered an audible prayer of thanksgiving for packy snow and the great memories I have because of it. It is a blessing from God.
That may not be the most profound thing about this Good Friday, but even something as mundane and fleeting as packy snow can have profound significance when we view it as a gift from an amazing, all-powerful, compassionate God. Oh, what a price He paid to provide a way to forgive our sins:
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)
Packy snow on Good Friday is, somehow, a perfect reminder of his goodness and blessings.