written by SUSAN M. S. BROWN
As the weather reports warn of a coming snow and ice storm, I think of these words from Psalm 147: "He gives snow like wool; he scatters hoarfrost like ashes. He scatters his hail like bread crumbs; who can stand against his cold?"
I say these verses through summer heat and winter chill but know how distant my everyday awareness and activities are from such familiar awe at God's work in creation and the power of nature.
One aspect of living with reverence for me is stretching my mind and senses to take in the snow and ice as more than an inconvenient coating on sidewalks and car windows; to see them, and the whole cosmos from which they come, as meaningful and originally blessed; to rest for a moment in the vastness, mystery, and beauty in which I exist.
Doing these things leads me to recall and appreciate God's in-dwelling in our world and my participation in the created community-human, animal, plant, and mineral-connected and interdependent in ways we are only beginning to understand.
Living with reverence puts the small, sometimes banal-seeming details of my life in their rightful context, in which God is always present, all is related, and everything is, somehow, gift.
- SUSAN M. S. BROWN is an Episcopalian laywoman and freelance editor who lives near Boston, Massachusetts.
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