There is no need to be concerned about snow in September” we were told as we began to pack and prepare for a trip to Austria. The travel sites said it wouldn’t come until later in the year, except perhaps on the highest peaks. Yet even as we drove from the Slovenian foothills into the Austrian Alps, rain turned to flurries and flurries turned to snow. Signs warned we ought to stick to the valleys and avoid the high passes. By the time we reached our destination, inches had fallen, blanketing the world in dazzling white.
The next morning I put on several layers of warm-weather clothing and went for a walk by myself. The world was pristine, the ground untouched by footsteps or tracks. The peaks that tower over the town were obscured by the clouds and by the flakes that continued to fall down and pile up. Every tree was coated in snow, almost as if God had told them to don their winter attire. Trees are beautiful in their own right, of course, but there is something about that snow that makes them more beautiful still.
I found a marker for a trail and followed it, trudging through deep woods made up of towering conifers. And then as the trail curved, the woods turned deciduous and I saw something that made me pause and consider: The trees had grown so heavy that they had bent under the weight of the snow, their bows now frozen to the ground. The branches that were usually raised high were now bent low. They were beautifully coated in white, yet sadly bent and bowed—bowed under the weight of the very thing that made them beautiful.
And as I stood alone in the snow, I thought of people I have known who have faced difficulties and hardships, who have endured deep trials and terrible afflictions. I thought of the ways that God’s providence has bent them down and brought them low. But then I thought as well of how those sorrows have not ruined them but shaped them and not destroyed their faith but increased it. In the strange way that sanctification works, the very circumstance that has been their most excruciating has also been their most beautifying. The pain has worked great good in their lives and brought great holiness. It has given them more of the dazzling character of Jesus Christ.
The very circumstance that has been their most excruciating has also been their most beautifying.
Like those trees, we are sometimes forced to bend low beneath the weight of our trials. Sometimes it seems like we cannot possibly bear them and that they can only crush us to the ground. Yet as we persevere we find that God has given us the strength to not only bear them but also to bow our knees in worship and to bow our hearts in submission. The posture of our hearts soon matches the posture of our bodies. We acknowledge that God is the one whose providence has directed our every high and every low, our every joy and every sorrow, our every laugh and our every tear. And as we pass through the trials with a faith that is unbroken and a heart that is victorious, we see that, like those trees, we were made beautiful by the very thing that bowed us down.
