When I Was A Child Growing Up In North Central ...

When I was a child growing up in North Central California, my favorite time of year was winter. While it seldom snows in the San Joaquin Valley, the great agricultural valley which runs nearly the full length of the State of California, only a little more than an hour’s drive away from Modesto are the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Well within a reasonable distance for a day trip is the beauty of same mountain region of Lake Tahoe, Sonora, and the Giant Sequoia. We spent time there year round but in the winter it was particularly magical. My siblings, cousins, and I would have snowball fights; climb over and under fallen logs, wearing our snow bibs and moon boots. We would inevitably have to head home in the evening, often after having dinner at one of the rustic western restraints in the area, but not without packing an ice chest or two full of hard packed snow. That ice chest may as well of been a treasure chest, for a young boy who loved snow, and that snow was more valuable than any gold, rubies, and silver, for when we returned home we had a piece of the snow of the mountain with us!

I remember making snow castles in the front yard and praying for colder weather so that the snow would last just a little bit longer. But it never did last for more than just a short while. The snow that I had removed from the mountain was destined to melt. The snow could not last forever when removed from that mountain side and even there the snow inevitably fades and melts into the soil, into the rivers, and evaporates into the sky. It does so because that is what snow does; it does not last forever. Earthly wisdom, the vanity of this life, is similarly fleeting and does not last. O, but the great wisdom of God is eternal. It is mighty and shall never fade!

Why do we grow content with the wisdom of this world? Why do we place our trust and such high premium upon things that will not last? Dear Saints of God, while the world says that only what can be seen, touched, or tasted, with our physical senses is worthy of trust, I beg you to consider the snow which melts, the physical body which passes away, and great edifices of human construction which fall with but a little time, a little pressure. Let us place our trust in the God who created all things; in the wisdom of the Eternal One, our great hope lies not in the passing and fleeting things of this world, but in our Redeemer who though He was slain, yet lives! Let me be a fool if it is foolish to trust in what I do not see which is eternal over what I do see which is fading away before my very eyes!