It's been striking how news reports about the 'snow days' we've just (for the most part) enjoyed have talked about the 'cost to the economy' (though their estimates vary wildly from £1.2 to £3billion!) of so many people taking time off work.But what about the gains?
Tens of thousands of working parents who got an extra day or two of precious time with their kids. Memories of snow, sledging and awe-inspiring sights of parks and gardens in the snow. Children seeing the stuff for the first time, snow sculptures (Moormead Park was covered in them apparently and we had both penguins and monsters in our garden!) as well as the squeals of delight as all ages rediscover the delights of sledging.
Most of all, though, many people experienced something we often forget - that the world doesn't automatically stop and fall apart because we're not all working at full steam ahead.
It reminded me on some great stuff from Eugene Peterson on the importance of the weekly Sabbath rest:
Sabbath-keeping preserves and honours time as God's gift of holy rest: it erects a weekly bastion against the commodification of time, against reducing time to money, reducing time to what we can get out of it, against leaving no time for God or beauty or anything that cannot be used or purchased. It is a defence against the hurry that desecrates time.
Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places P.111
I know that not all of us were able to keep the "snowy Sabbath" - otherwise there'd have been no hospitals running, electricity to heat the water for hot chocolate and many small businesses don't have the luxury of an extra Sabbath on the whim of some white cold stuff...
...but for those of us able to take the time it serves as a great defence against "the hurry that desecrates time" and a reminder that God's world doesn't always need our work to keep it upright.
I hear there might be more coming..?
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