Unique as a Snowflake

 

I was thanking God this morning for all the beauty I’m surrounded by, and in particular the blessings of all my unique Christmas boughs. Each one has a story. I love the diversity of the ornaments, the themes, what they are each made of, and their different colors. As I’m thanking God for His blessings, I suddenly have an “ah ha” moment, there is one thing that ties all of the boughs together. Ice and snowflakes. All these years and I never noticed it. The Michigan State bough has several Spartan snowflakes. The “folk art” bough is primarily all wooden snowflakes of different sizes and shapes. In the living room my original bough is made with handcrafted glass icicles from a local artist, over 30 years old. There is also a dragonfly and metal snowflake bough. The bedroom bough of purple and fuchsia bulbs has three-dimensional metal snowflakes I found at a hardware store in Florida 20 years ago and intricate silver snowflakes, both have to be polished every year. A new bough went up this year in the bathroom and contains all of my favorite ornaments that used to go on my tree. I call it my element bough because there is wood, fiber, glass, metal, clay, bamboo, oranges, and porcelain ornaments. There is even a sand dollar with Mary and baby Jesus painted on it. Materials matter when you are a textile major. My Christmas tree is filled with crocheted snowflakes I received as a wedding gift and has a wooden snowflake as the tree topper. This year I added giant paper snowflakes to the snowman decorations in my kitchen.

So, I start praying into snowflakes. Why do I love them? Why is God highlighting them? This obviously goes with my blog theme. Does God want me to write about snowflakes and if so, what does he want me to say?

“My people are like snowflakes.” Each one is created uniquely, no two, not even twins are completely identical. God the creator of all of earth, designed each one of us in our mother’s wombs to be one-of-a-kind.  God’s unending love imagined cultures, diversity, and beauty in a rainbow of colors. He gave each one of us our own unique identity and purpose.

Wilson Bentley was a young boy who also loved snowflakes. He would draw them, study them, and grew up to be the first person to ever photograph them, proving that each one was different. A few years ago I learned about Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist who attempted to prove water is alive. He took glasses of water and exposed them to different types of music. He then froze the water and looked at the icicle formations. Water that was exposed to classical, gentle music had beautiful formations, while the water that was exposed to heavy metal music showed deformed and ugly crystals. While the science is questionable, because he couldn’t repeat the results under a controlled environment, it does remind me about our walk with Jesus. Jesus introduced himself as the living water to the woman at the well. He said whoever drank of his water would never thirst again. If we have accepted Jesus’s gift of salvation and invited Him into our hearts, He lives inside of us. However, the world we live in is filled with ugly music, filled with selfishness, pride, evil, hatred, offensive, and anger. If we don’t constantly turn to the source of our living water, our hearts can become tainted, and the beauty of the God of Peace that should reflect through our words, actions, and thoughts, can cut and hurt others. Emoto believed praying over the water could heal it. We know as Christians we communicate and invite Jesus into our lives when we pray. We have the choice to change our focus from a world full of evil and challenges, to the love of Christ, who died to remove our sin and give us a life of abundant peace and joy.

When we recognize others for their unique beauty, when we respect the God given gifts they walk in, and love on each other we honor God in unity. Thinking of snowflakes, we still each have our own DNA, but when we function as a community and the bride of Christ our hearts melt and become one. We join Christ, the living water, sent to cleanse and beautify the earth by spreading the good news. This Christmas as we decorate with snowflakes, set up our manager sets, and love on our families and community, may we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the one son of God who came to save us all. Let us move closer to becoming unified in God’s love and salvation. May we become one water through Christ

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