Snow and Tornados

    This morning we awakened to a beautiful blanket of newfallen snow shrouding the bleak winter landscape where we have come for a few days.  Although I grew up in the mountains,  I find myself still feeling like a child, excited by the beauty of the snow.  Driving through the darkness, cold and downpouring rain to arrive, the world looked like a very different place from this morning.  The change seems amost miraculous.
About midnight we were awakened by a call from our son, unable to join us, telling us about the tornado which cut a swath of destruction through Morehead City, NC.  Inability to see brought by the darkness of the night and loss of electricity seemed to magnify the condition.
Thinking about these two places, miles apart – and seemingly worlds apart – reminds me of the rapidity in which change can come.
I am reminded of the words of the poet Rudyard Kipling in his classic poem, IF.  “Treat these two imposters just the same.”  The real world is not the world we see, whether shrouded in darkness or beauty.  The real world is the one in which our loving heavenly Father reigns on high with a miriad of angels.  There are no problems in that Kingdom, only plans.
Let us choose to live by faith and trust instead of by sight.  Then our darkness can be transformed to day, and the bleakness of our landscape to a wonderland of beauty.