Have you ever had a sermon or Sunday message that really spoke to you? For me, one small sermon I heard 50 years ago still resonates with me to this day.

I was a young Boy Scout on my first winter camping trip at our scout camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. We were staying in the lodge so it really wasn’t snow camping but it was an adventure nonetheless.

All day Saturday we played in the snow, building a fabulous inner tube and sled run down a hill with sharp S-curves and jumps. The weather was sunny and the snow was light and fresh. It was magnificent! By the end of the day the whole area was completely trampled with our footprints, sitzmarks and holes. We went to bed tired but happy to be inside the lodge because a storm had moved in.  

The next morning, since the 12th point of the Scout Law is “A Scout is Reverent”, we held a small church service near where we had built our sled run. Overnight the storm had dumped about 12” of fresh snow, but now the sun was out and the new snow glistened and twinkled under an intense blue sky. After a few short bible verses one of the adults, Mr. Marchandt, got up to speak. He told us to look around and take in the beauty of the area, then look where we had been sliding the day before. “Where are all the footprints, holes and sitzmarks?”, he asked. They had been covered up under a blanket of fresh, white snow. And so it is with God’s love, he told us. Through Jesus, your sins are forgiven and you can have a fresh start. I marveled at his wisdom and saw for the first time a vivid picture of what true forgiveness means. I think of that sermon whenever I see a fresh snowfall covering tracks and footprints. 

My wife Chris and I got married on New Years Eve to symbolize a fresh start and a new direction for our lives. And you know what? It snowed that night in Seattle. This New Years think of God’s love and redemption as a new beginning for your own life. A blanket of fresh snow to cover your past sins.  

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”  Isaiah 1:18