Snirt

The unusually high piles of snow and dirt around my city and in my yard set me to thinking.

Our winter here in central Indiana has been snowed under—really. The perimeters of parking lots have hills of snow and many of them are looking very dingy. The snow begins to melt down, and then it snows on top of the hills. For a few days, it looks white again. Then it turns to what my friend Margaret, a high school science teacher, called “snirt.”

Why?

Of course, some of the reason is that accumulated dirt on the parking lot is scooped up along with the snow. Part of it is simple car exhaust. However, the mounds of drifted snow in my back yard also turn to snirt. A shovel has not touched it; and the possibility of exhaust is remote.

At the heart of every snowflake is a particle of dirt. Ice crystals form around the particle of dirt making a lovely snowflake. At the heart, it is dirt.

Within the most handsome or beautiful person lies a heart of sin. Dress up the person, add glamour, but at the center of that person is self interest. The most significant changes take place when the individual person takes on a new person when he comes to Christ for saving grace.

How wonderful it would be if that person now always emerged as a lovely, pure person one hundred percent of the time. In frustration Paul felt the spiritual battle that rages within every Christian. (Expressed in Romans 7) The battle between self-interest and God-interest is an on-going conflict… As you grow in Christ, your self interest gradually diminishes, but it seems it tends to lie dormant. Until Christ calls me home to Glory or comes for me in the air, I shall always have this inner battle. Today I am thankful for the verse in I John 4:4 “. . . greater is he [Jesus] that is in you than he [Satan] that is in the world” and temptations do not come our way but that our ever watchful God will make a way of escape. (I Corinthians 10:13)

• Posted in: Everyday Thinking
• Tagged: inner struggles, snirt, snowflake formation, source of sin