Cold, Hard and Unforgiving

It has been three weeks since the last accumulating snowfall hit the mid-Atlantic. Yet, everywhere you turn, you can still see snow. Temperatures have stayed well below seasonal averages, the sun has refused to shine many days and the large volume of snow which has accumulated means that although some melting has occurred, there is still no end to the sight of snow at every turn.

I love snow. I love watching it fall, seeing it pile up and playing in it. I love the way snow trumps almost every agenda in Washington, D.C. and brings life to a screeching halt. I love having my family home together enjoying sitting by the fire and drinking hot chocolate in our pajamas – at two o’clock in the afternoon. Beautiful white fluffy snow cleans the world better than Clorox on the stained shirt of a little boy.

As much as I love beautiful white, clean snow, I have an almost equal distaste for dirty snow. What is left in Washington is no longer the clean beautiful snow that had fallen weeks before on our landscape. What is now piled on the side of the road, in the medians and in virtual mini-mountains in parking lots is dirty snow. Though it had started out beautiful and white as it fell to the ground, the snow has been plowed, pushed aside and covered with dirt from vehicles flying by. It is the kind of snow only man, vehicles and lots of nasty chemicals can create. Due to the large nature of some of the piles, it is just not going away. Snow in the grass has melted in the warmth of the sun, but the dirty snow is cold, hard and very unforgiving. Weeks after it fell, it sits seemingly immovable and covered in dirt. Most unattractive.

This is where the lesson turned very personal and very painful for me. God showed me how closely my speech lately had become to that large pile of dirty snow. Cold, hard and very unforgiving. In an attempt to “always be direct with people,” my speech had become something that served only me and whatever selfish desires I had at a particular given moment. Why, of course, didn’t others need to hear my opinion on a certain subject? Weren’t they just dying to know what I thought? Besides, maybe they needed my “help” in the form of unsolicited advice. After all, didn’t I really have more experience and know better? Ouch. It is painful to even type such ugly thoughts that my selfish heart has been busy justifying. Listen to what Jesus says about the words my mouth speaks.

“For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
Matthew 12:34b (NIV)


So, if I do not like the words I hear coming out of my mouth, the first place I have to look is my heart. When had I decided that my personal opinion was gospel the world needed to hear? Though God had given me the blessing of having some experiences I had learned from through the years, were not those lessons designed to keep me humble rather than making me arrogant? Where were the concepts of grace and forgiveness in my heart and speech, especially with those I love the most?

I do not like dirty snow. But even more important, God wants me to not like a dirty heart. When I allow myself to be deluded into believing the importance of the words I have to share, I will become just as cold, hard and unforgiving as the dirty snow on the side of the road. Precious Father, today could you please make my thoughts and words clean and refreshing? I want the things that come out of my heart and mouth to be as beautiful and pure as your clean, white snow.