Dear Saints,

We’re still in the Christmas season, but for many people the first weeks of a new year often bring more sadness than celebration. It’s no surprise: we’re made for warmth, light, and the gentle breeze, while January in Boonton is anything but! Yet God is just as much the author of Winter as every other season, so perhaps it’s worth trying to see it from his point of view.

Wilson Bentley was a Vermont meteorologist who took the first detailed pictures of snow over a hundred years ago. Since then, Mr. Bentley’s theory that no two snowflakes are alike has held up to modern scientific scrutiny, though you might have to go down to the molecular level to realize it. Every single snowflake is formed from around 100,000 water droplets in a warm air/cool air collision process that takes roughly 30-45 minutes. As one CalTech snowflake scholar says, “anything that has any complexity is different than everything else.” To put it in practical terms, there are 10^158 snowflake possibilities - that’s 10^70 times more designs than there are atoms in the universe!

These months can be harsh and hazardous, but they’re also an opportunity to contemplate anew the unrepeatable beauty of God’s creation. If he so loves and carefully crafts each of the one septillion snow crystals that fall through the air each winter, how much more does he love and craft each one of us, the creatures who bear his very image and likeness? How much more uniquely wonderful are we? No bitter cold or long darkness will ever change that.

Christ’s Peace,

Father Daniel

δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ