GreatRidge Station

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.

I don’t have the clout to make this happen, but I’m happy to know that I’m not the only one thinking in these terms. I’ve thought for a long time that the best solution to our oil and pollution problem would be a steam-electric hybrid. Apparently, BMW is thinking in the same direction (not exactly, but close).

The complaints about steam are that:

• It takes about 2 minutes to work of a head of steam to drive the vehicle.
  This is why I suggest a steam-electric hybrid. Use the electric power to give the user immediate driveability, and then switch to steam as soon as it is ready.
• Water freezes when it is cold.
  No one says that the system has to use “steam” from water. With all of our chemical smarts, it seems that we could create a closed-loop system that would use something other than Di-Hidrogen Monoxide.

The best news about steam is that you do not get greenhouse gasses from an external combustion engine. Second, you can burn anything that burns consistently, including ethanol. And finally, steam engines are 98% efficient, compared to about 35% for the current technology in internal combustion engines.

Honda: Are you listening?

I suppose, to paraphrase the old 1970s TV commercial, “It’s not nice to fool with the liturgical calendar.” That doesn’t stop me, though.

I have always looked at today as Great Commission Day: March Forth!

Who would have thought that a bad pun could help me remember something so significant.

The term “Great Commission” is a term that Christians apply to Christ’s final command:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” –Matt 28:18-20 (ESV)