Celebrating snow: God’s glory when stuff falls from the sky

So we’re marking exams in Room 6. Joking and jabbering and hoping and the snow is getting closer. Jo’burg. Centurion. Newlands. I’m glad Murray convinced Scott to wear a jacket this morning. Now it’s… here! White wafting otherworldly freezing bits of happy event. We’re outside. Boys spill from the boarding house. I’m jumping and whooping and tweeting and facebooking this tiny slice of strangely surreal out-of-place African miracle while hardcore schoolboys in short sleeve shirts try to hide their delight and watch me with wry smiling nonchalance, like, she's slightly mad. We split the exams, grab red pens and run. This is too great a day for marking. I drive through familiar Faerie Glen streets with snowflakes on my windscreen and I can’t wipe the smile off my face all the way home. I burst in and drag Maria onto the stoep and we try to catch flakes on our fingers. For the first time in either of our lives we quickly bring in the washing because the snow is making it wet. I phone Murray from the lounge to describe our garden – snow in the sandpit. My folks are fetching the boys from school. I’ll meet them straightaway (like I said, marking can wait). I want to share this Big First. Lola has snow on her lashes. I leave her blanket under the carport. I’m suddenly wracked with pangs of prayer for people without blankets or carports who would curse my glee. I quickly stop to buy nappies and chat about the weather to numerous random supermarket all-walks-of-lifers and I wonder at how precipitation can rain on the parade of racism – classism – sexism – washing away watersheds. The boys romp a bit in the wind of Granny’s garden. Cam loses interest quickly. Flimsy melting invisible stuff doesn’t rock his world. Until he catches a few flakes on his face and hands and jacket and we start dreaming of a white Christmas and his imagination fills in the magical gaps. Scott won’t remember today or how his eager earnest trotting about melted my heart more quickly than the snow. It’s the first time it’s snowing in all nine provinces and the first time I’m picking jasmine in my mom’s garden with snowflakes drifting loose across my face. We head home to heaters and blanket tepees in the playroom and we order slap chips for supper because snow in our city is worth celebrating. The boys are manic with Dad-excitement but eventually they surrender to toothpaste and prayers and we marvel, quiet and grateful, that God allowed us a glimpse of the storehouses of his snow.

Job 38