I'm (not) walking in the snow

It's been a while since i blogged, something to do with spare time going on a catalogue of things that broke down, inc: my desktop PC, the washing machine, tumble drier (I know its bad for the planet) the car (also bad) the electrics dying in the house, and then a leak in our kitchen ceiling this week. But all that is over now (i hope) and we had a great walk round the Museum of Welsh Life on Saturday, where there was still snow piled up high and out of the way. It reminded us of all the fun we'd had with snow over the festive period.

I remember the first time my daughter really encountered snow.

‘Oh … wow’, she said and then, proud of some recently acquired knowledge, she pointed a finger and proclaimed with certainty, ‘White!’ Snow was a wondrously strange new object to behold, a fresh mystery to be embraced, one that made her shiver for an instant and then ran between her tiny fingers. I was just happy to see her sense of wonder in God’s creation.

The next time Niamh saw snow outside her window we were impressed that she remembered what it was called. This time the conversation went:

‘Oh … wow! … Snow … White.’

Apart from making me look for seven dwarves, I was again impressed with the wonderment she offered to the falling flakes of white that gathered on the ground. While grown-ups were worrying about journey times to work and if the Gritters had been out, (and I know these are legitimate concerns) she was more than happy to welcome this occasional but spectacular visitor back into her life.

Snow fell again just before Christmas in 2009 and it was half-way through January before the thaw set in round here. During that time Niamh went walking in the snow, slipped and slid across the snow, threw balls of snow and built men of snow and eventually … she kind of became bored with it. Snow became a part of every day, taken for granted, no longer greeted with cries of ‘wow!’

Sadly, many of us do the same, and not just with the snow. We loose a sense of wonder with the world that God created. We hurry past sunsets and primroses, and forget the excitement we once enjoyed by chasing squirrels. The world becomes, as some say, dull as ditchwater; though as any naturalist will tell you, that too is teeming with exciting life. Some of us loose our sense of wonder with the church, this wonderful family that God has called us to be part of and which He’ has chosen to show the world His love. And some of us loose our sense of wonder with other human beings: equally made in the Image of God, we quickly reduce them into ‘interesting or boring’, ‘beneficial to my purpose’ or a ‘hindrance on the way’. And so we easily forget that every person whom we meet carries in their living something of God’s glory and reveals Christ to us.

As the days go by we need to keep alive our sense of wonder. I am reminded of the poet John O’Donohue who once said:

I would love to live

As a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.