Snowflakes

I must admit I haven't always loved the winter... If you ask my husband, who LOVES the snow, he would say it's not my favourite time of year.

Having said that, I have always loved snowflakes. Not big gobs of them but one at a time when they land on my coat on a wintry day. They are tiny miracles to me, with each one completely unique, always having precisely 6 points with perfect 30 degree angles and exact repeated patterns emerging from the center point. In fact, I am always looking at images of snowflakes when I see them on ornaments, tissue boxes, stickers, store front windows and anywhere else they happen to pop up... and I will admit I am slightly critical of those images that have eight points or imagine, five!

I can't help thinking that when God created the snowflake there must have been a certain

joy knowing that one day we would have the technology to discover the intricacies of each one... and perhaps there was a lesson there too. Although each one is different, together they are powerful enough to stop traffic on highways, bury vehicles, cover our Northern lands with blankets of white and cause us to sigh as we have to get our shovels out one more time!

For me, these diminutive beauties, lasting only for an instant are a reminder that God loves us and wants us to delight in these tiny works of art. So here's to snowflakes... though they are fleeting, they can melt hearts!

"Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a

snowflake escapes its fashioning hand." - Henry David Thoreau

Actual Snowflake

Credit: Kenneth Libbrecht

The Art of the Snowflake, 2007