Author’s Note: This reflection was originally published as a Facebook Note (the platform’s never-fully-and-no-longer-much-at-all-supported blogging utility) on January 9, 2011. I’m reposting some of those Notes here because they’re difficult to find in Facebook now, and in some cases impossible.

January 9, 2011

As I was shoveling my driveway this morning, my next door neighbor had a question for me. ‘You’re a man of the cloth,’ he said, ‘Do you believe God makes it snow?’

‘Well, not at any particular time,’ I said. ‘I mean, I think God set the laws of nature that make snow happen, but that it snowed today rather than…’ and I waved my hand vaguely.

He nodded. ‘I don’t think God makes it snow,’ he replied. ‘If he did, you wouldn’t be out there shoveling it now.’

I laughed, but I also thought to myself, ah, but if somebody I really disliked were shoveling this snow right now, I might be inclined to think God had brought it for this moment. That would feel to me like divine justice. Or at least as if God were responding to my concerns in the world.

As I shoveled and thought, I realized that what I was thinking about (and not shoveling) wasn’t divine justice, but magic. Not the public performances of illusion we enjoy, but the exercise of power through invocation of other forces.

The appeal of magic is that it is reliable (stay with me here). That is, if I do the spell correctly, I get a predictable result. In the history of human religious thinking, gods were frequently invoked in the performance of magic. I recall that many years ago, archaeologists found a storehouse of papyrus fragments in Egypt, many of which had clearly been sold in the marketplace as spells of protection, blessings, or even curses against someone else. As I remember, the God of Israel was among the deities invoked, and also, I think, Jesus…

But the God I know is not one who is ‘magical.’ The God I know isn’t so controllable, so predictable, that I can call down snow on the unjust. Those ancient spells are attempts to control and to direct divine powers. The God I know merely smiles at the very idea.

The God I know invites human beings into relationship, into friendship, into mentorship, into worship. The God I know sends rain (and snow) onto the just and the unjust, and invites both to accept the free gift of divine grace. The God I know listens, considers, and acts in the world: but I would never pretend to predict just what this God will do. Merely be thankful when I recognize those acts for the blessings they are.

And to appreciate, as well, the wonders of random, not-necessarily-specifically-directed, and ‘magical’ in a different sense, snow.

The photo was taken by Eric Anderson on January 12, 2011, in Portland, Connecticut, after another snowstorm.