“He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs;
who can stand before his cold?”
— Psalm 147:17 —

10:00am on Saturday: With sixteen inches on the ground and sixteen hours left of Jonas I look outside my window and think: “Who can stand before his cold?”

10:00am on Sunday: Unable to gather with our church family, what can I say to my children about the blizzard of 2016? How can I help them know the God of creation and redemption, through this memorable storm? How can we pray for those suffering under its effects?

What follows is a biblical theological long-read on what Scripture says about snow, icy cold, and winter weather, along with a short family devotional for anyone interested.

• Article: Seeing Snow with New Eyes
• Family Devotion: Don’t Waste Your Blizzard: A Snowy Meditation on God’s Power and Purity

(No) Snow in the Beginning

In the beginning, there was water but not snow. On the second day God separated the waters in the sky from the waters on the earth (Gen 1:6–8); on the third day he gathered the waters on the earth, forming the dry ground (Gen 1:9–10). In Genesis 2, we learn “mist was going up from the land watering the whole face of the ground” (v. 6) and “a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there is divided and became four rivers” (v. 10). So before Adam sinned (Genesis 3) and God subjected the earth to futility (Romans 8:18–22), the had plenty of water, but no subzero temperatures to create ice crystals and snow squalls. Continue reading →