“From my living room window as I write, I can look out across the broad front lawns of our farm like a lovely picture post card of wintry New England.  In my fireplace the good cedar logs are burning and crackling.  I just stopped to go into my gleaming kitchen to test the crumbly brown goodness of the toasted veal cutlets a la {?} in my oven.  Cook these slowly…”  Elizabeth Lane (as played by the versatile and provocative Barbara Stanwyck) sitting in her New York apartment (pretending to be on a farm in Connecticut) typing her column  for the American Housekeeping Magazine in the movie, “Christmas in Connecticut”

No toasted veal cutlets warming in my oven here (I just had a slice of cold pizza for breakfast), but along with a rich cup of steaming-hot coffee I am enjoying a delicious, slow Sunday morning in the Colorado air where a light, dusty snow is falling softly like grace, covering the winter-scarred landscape with a sparkling beauty in  a gentle silence.  In a pallette of white alone, God manages to cause the somewhat lifeless winter look to awaken in splendor and reveal His mercy-covering nature to a fallen world.

Snow falls like grace and suddenly all things are new again. 

“God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding.  He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’  So that all men He has made may know His work, He stops every man from his labor.”  Job 37.5-7 NIV

image found on google: Rocky Mountain Reflections Photography, Inc.  by Andy Cook

² O Lord, hear my voice.
       Let your ears be attentive
       to my cry for mercy.

 ³ If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins,
       O Lord, who could stand?

 ⁴ But with you there is forgiveness;
       therefore you are feared.

Psalm 130. 2-4 NIV

And with great humility I bow my face, knowing it is by the great grace of God that I have not been carried to justice for my own sin in a forceful, cleansing  judgement-tsunami, never to be revived.  Grace happens.