A Fearsome Freshness

You will have to wait a little longer for my new year trip pictures (sorry). But I do have some fresh pictures from today! We got snow last night, just a few inches. But the snow was enough to beautify our little city with very little of it affecting the roads by morning. But even as I write this, the snow is a memory except for a few clinging in the darkest shadows.

But as I drove around in it last night with the newly icy roads and unblemished snow across the yards and fields, I could not help but wonder at the contrast. The dreadful fear that the winter precipitation brings when it is across our path, yet the beautiful purity it represents when we can pause to simply gaze at its freshness. Opportunity often presents similar anxiety for us. We love to stop and admire the untarnished hope and cleanness it brings for our future. Yet the thought of traversing into its unknown expanses fills us with dread for what hazards and stumbles it may hold for us. Yet if we fail to embrace it while it is there, we miss out on the thrill of unexpected life and exhilarating unknown that it offers to those not too old to venture out one more time.