Ice is the enemy

Tomorrow I will have been living in this house for two months. It hardly seems possible, but I look back over all that has happened and it seems like a lot longer. For several days before I moved in massive amounts of snow fell on this region. I’ve been shoveling out with the help of some sunny days ever since. My front driveway and sidewalks have been snow free for weeks, but my back yard is a totally different story. There are still piles of snow and slabs of ice back there two inches thick. As I was breaking up the slabs of ice and scraping the last of the snow off my north facing patio this afternoon, I thought to myself “wow, just in time, we’re supposed to have snow this Saturday and this would all be underneath and it would just build up again. It sure is easier to clear off when you start from a clean surface”. God nudged me just a little for me to see this in a spiritual perspective. Bitterness is like ice. It may take root in a big storm in our lives and while most of the pain and frustration of the situation might melt away pretty quickly, if we don’t clear it all out initially, it builds up and creates ice. Each time another storm comes along it just reinforces and builds on that foundation creating thick slabs that are really hard to break through, and take even longer to just melt on their own. When we have a clear surface to work from without all the ice underneath, every time a storm comes into our lives, we can easily push it aside and let it melt away. There’s also another aspect of this that occurred to me. The front yard was a lot easier to clear off because it faces south and gets a lot of sun. The back yard faces north, so it doesn’t get that much exposure to the sun. Just like the south facing yard, if our spirits don’t get enough exposure to God’s Son, it’s not as easy to clear off that stubborn patch of icy bitterness.

Hebrews 12:14-15
14Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. 15See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.