The Treasures of the Snow

“Have you entered into the treasures of the snow? Or have you seen the treasures of the hail” (Job 38:22)? Living three millennia ago in an arid region of Mesopotamia, snow would have been a rare delight to Job. But there is a special treasure locked up in every snow crystal that Job could not have imagined. Since the invention of modern methods of magnification, it has come to light that as complex snow crystals form, they branch out in amazing patterns of diversity that gives each one a uniqueness that makes it different from all others.

In a high school science class, I was taught that no two snow crystals are exactly alike. My skeptical adolescent mind thought: “how could they know without examining every snow flake that has ever fallen?”

According to Kenneth G. Libbrecht, who is a physicist at Caltech, “it is unlikely that any two complex snow crystals, out of all those made over the entire history of the planet, have ever looked completely alike.” For more information you can go to his fascinating web site, SnowCrystals.com.

I simply want to take his scientific expertise and give it a theological application. “For it was you who formed my inward parts … I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). If snowflakes are so complex in their intricate designs, how much more the formation of a human being? Even in the case of identical twins that come from a division of the same fertilized egg, there are significant differences in personality characteristics and environmental factors, which make them unique individuals. There’s no one that is an exact duplicate of you. As we often say, when God made you he broke the mold.

For me, all this amazing complexity and diversity boils down to this simple affirmation of faith: The value of every human life is so awesome and wonderful it must not be cheapened. Rather, it should be regarded as a sacred gift to be treasured.