Even now, my first reaction to school closings is a childlike “Hooray!” even after this many years later. When young, it was a day of delight and freedom to sled down the hill on those dish-shaped aluminum coasters (OK, not very far; it was a small hill), help shovel the walk and later the driveway, build snow sculptures (my father considered mere snow people unimaginative, so we had dinosaurs and other wondrous creatures), and get so totally frozen that we couldn’t feel our toes while warming our hands around cups of hot cocoa. Snow days were for playing and reading and enjoying a day unstructured by schoolwork. When I got slightly older, they were for sleeping in!
In college it changed, since classes were held on all but the worst days since most professors lived within walking distance, and big snows started to lose their magic. By the time I was chronologically an adult, snow days were either just another day for working or an extra pain because I had to get out earlier to shovel and clear out the car and blow the driveway clear. No more sleeping in…
It then gets to where many of us dread snow days because they end up being extra work, not fun. Everything that you couldn’t do while the school or your business is closed has to be made up, while also doing the subsequent day’s work. Production quotas have to be met anyhow, meetings rescheduled, deadlines are that much closer with less time to do the work. Teachers have to redo lesson plans to compress more work into fewer days. No snow day goes unpunished. Closings are bad news.
In upstate New York, we have come to terms with storms and closings. You simply learn to cope. Some things have to get done anyhow, but often times we will reassess and reconfigure, and often enough decide that Monday’s meeting doesn’t have to be rescheduled, but we can phone around or send emails to get most of the important stuff done, and just let go of the less important things or wait until next meeting. Sometimes we just write something off with a sigh of relief, “well, we had a snow day,” and everyone understands. There is no point beating ourselves up because of an act of God. We shrug and invoke “Snow day rules.” The important stuff gets done, but sometimes you can just enjoy the day off. Even as adults.
The Bible often uses “The Day of the Lord” to refer to the last day or the end of time or the day of judgment, or even the day of our personal reckoning when we meet our maker. Some people worry about that as a cataclysmic, grim event to be feared. The Day is bad news. Others imagine it as bright and sunny and wonderful, a freeing from the weights of this age, a liberation from care. Like a snow day for children!
I think it’s a lovely parable of grace.
If we could relax our grip on our spiritual future a bit and accept that once in a while God allows us some holy space in the middle of all the work and effort and anxiety and busyness we endure, we might actually do better. That taste of relaxation and freedom that we had as children can soothe our spirits even now. God offers us a break, more often than we notice. And that is grace. Maybe God’s love is like that warm cup of hot chocolate in our hands, pure wonder and delight. With marshmallows.
So, let’s imagine God’s grace being the grandest kind of a snow day, the giddy delight in being free to enjoy “really free time,” not just eternally but even here and now, where we can celebrate as kids at heart.
In Christ,
David
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