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4—SNOW
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AND then suddenly—snow. And all our pleasant things are laid waste, or so indeed it seems, for we cannot see them anywhere; and all our newborn hopes are deep under the snow. For hopes had begun to be: a hope of healing, perhaps, if the trial be of the flesh; of a reversal of decision if it be something that lies in the power of another; or some touch on the wheel that turns our earthly affairs, if it concerns our circumstances; of some break somewhere, some natural human joy, some relief, some comfort in the aching sense of loss—and now the snow has fallen and covered everything.
In this cold picture a young fir has shaken off his load of snow; but our hopes were not hardy things like firs, they were made of more perishable stuff. We see no sign of them. They are all under the blanket of snow, and there is an insidious push towards “the wasteful luxury of depression,” or some other deadly form of spiritual indifference. What can we do? If the snow be not something against which we are meant to engage in spiritual warfare, a manifestation of the power of the prince of darkness whom we must always resist, then I know of only one answer: In acceptance lieth peace.
Things may be so that it is not easy to know whether we should resist or accept. And yet, if we wait a little, clearness will be given. Something will tell us. (Rather, Someone will tell us. The sheep know the Shepherds voice.) Perhaps a verse of Scripture will be brought to mind and illuminated like a mountain peak in sunrise.
St. Paul dropped a shining thread that will lead us through the maze. He resisted injustice: Stripes—“Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman?” Imprisonment—“I appeal unto Caesar.”
But when stripes and imprisonment had to be endured, there is acceptance. He does not think of himself as Caesar’s prisoner: “Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ.” The steel chains of Caesar are his Lord’s chains of gold. He is expecting deliverance (“I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you”), but we do not ever find him wrestling for his liberty with the rulers of the darkness of this world, who were behind the powers that had imprisoned him. His wrestling, laboring, agonizing, in prayer, was for others, not for himself. And even though he did not see the answer to all those prayers, he was so peacefully minded that he could lead others into peace.