If you watch snow coming down so gently and softly, you may think it is one of the weak things of the world, and if you weigh a snowflake on a pair of scales it will not even make the scales tremble.

Yet a snowstorm can stop trains, block roads, break telephone wires and interrupt people going to work. Up in the mountains avalanches can destroy villages, tear rocks from their foundations and even change the face of a mountain-side.

Now sometimes we are tempted to think that we can’t be of much use and can’t do much in this world. We have to remember it is each little snowflake doing its own part that gives it its strength, each one falling in its own place without ceasing. And if the tiny snowflakes that weigh next to nothing can be so powerful, surely we can be of great value if we put our weight on the right side.

Newly fallen snow is the whitest thing in the world. But it doesn’t stay white for long. It soon gets covered in dirt and mixed with mud and is turned to slush.

Just as sin spoils our beauty, it also spoils our whiteness. We are not long in the world before sin begins to lay its ugly mark on us. Those marks will never come off unless we ask God to wash them clean.

God can melt the dirty snow in our city street. He can lift it up into the clouds and turn it again into beautiful, white snow.

He can do the same for us, too. He can wash away all our stains and make us “whiter than snow”.