What do you think God has in mind for you in the "storehouse of the snow"?
I could say a lot about the man who asked me this question the other night on Facebook. I have only met him once and even that was a bit by chance. In the short time I've known of him, my brief interactions with him, have been meaningful and a blessing.
I am so glad I had even a brief encounter with him. Some people are like that, their Christ-likeness shows immediately. They are like a piece of Godiva chocolate. You don't have to eat a large piece to know that you have experienced something wonderful.
There was something about the phrase "storehouse of snow." I now abide in South Dakota. I try never to say I live in South Dakota because I don't feel alive here. I say I don't like snow but it isn't the snow that I don't like, it is the complications that it causes in my life. I can't get around like I would like. I am terrified of the ice that forms that makes walking treacherous.
It's like that with South Dakota. It isn't really that I dislike South Dakota. South Dakota is just geography. An arbitrary designation by a government to classify a land mass. Like snow, there are places that have some beauty. It's an odd sort of beauty, never quite peaceful, sometimes eerie, but like all deserts, it has a harsh beauty. A beauty not easily discovered under its harshness. Only an expectant eye and open heart will see its beauty.
It's been the disruption of my life; the confinement. South Dakota complicated my life. My life was so close to being settled until a fateful phone call from South Dakota. South Dakota broke in with its harshness. South Dakota was to become for me a sort of crucible.
A friend in Nashville recommended a book to me. It is a good book about South Dakota. Many of the locals don't like the book. Perhaps because it is too true. I liked it.
The book is written by a woman who like me found herself in South Dakota. Unlike me, it was her choice to come to South Dakota and she had roots to the land and the soil and the people. I have none. It was not my choice.
Nevertheless, in Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris I thought I found a little hope. She also found South Dakota like a crucible. She found herself in the silence of the snow. I have not.
I am not Kathleen, nor is she me. Our journeys are not the same. She came willingly, I am still kicking and screaming.
Nevertheless, the God who led her on her journey through the crucible of South Dakota is the same God that brought me here. I am here.
It is time to answer the question. What does God have for me in the storehouses of snow?
As I journey, as I look, as I ponder, as I discover and as I suffer, I will share with you my view from the storehouses of snow. There is a treasure here somewhere.
I am opening my eyes and heart to find beauty in the storehouses of snow. My prayer is that as I do, I will be able to answer this difficult question.
Join me.
