"Untouched Fields of Snow;" journal entry from the evening of November 29th while riding home with Greg from Malenovice

"Untouched fields of snow."  This phrase has been going through my my mind.  I see it as a living picture of some truth of this country and the people who live here.  As you drive or train around these days you will surely see untouched fields (or landscapes) of snow - beautiful, bright, shining.  And so the people are here - made in the image of God with innate beauty and worth and value and purpose.  But in the midst of its beauty there is death. There is no life in snow.  It neither is alive nor produces life, and so are the vast majority of people here.  In them is only death, and like snow that is here for a season and then melts away, so their lives will melt away.  And for a season they may gleam and shine bright and beautiful, but there is death in them, and unlike snow that melts away and returns each in year in season, they will not return.  It is appointed to die once and then face judgment.[1]  And this fate is all our fates; for sin gives birth to death and only death, and maybe as with the first snow the birth is celebrated, but in due season death comes.

And it is in this state, in the untouched fields of snow of our hearts that Jesus proclaims, "The fields are white for harvest!"[2]  For it is Jesus who takes our hearts touched only by the gleaming, cold death of sin and brings forth life.  With the fields frozen and buried, the stuff of life is cut off, for the fields of untouched snow cannot and will not grow - buried under gleaming death - and death would have its way, but Jesus comes to the fields of our frozen hearts and melts away the sin and quickens us to new life, taking the frozen, gleaming death of our lives upon Himself and giving us the stuff of life, which in truth is the person of life - Himself - Jesus the Christ.

And so I hope and believe for the people of the Czech Republic and for my friends and family back home in America, whose lives are but fields of snow - life killed, buried under the weight of death.

And it is to these fields Jesus also proclaims, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.  Pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out more laborers."[3]  And like the sun that melts the ice and brings life, so the Son of God melts our dead, frozen hearts and gives new life - His life - to us.

And it is to these frozen fields of snow we laborers are called, and to these frozen souls we proclaim the Savior; we love those frozen and dead by sin, and the Holy Spirit moves in and through us as life from the life Giver, and saves.

We are in a world of untouched fields of snow waiting to be touched by the melting, life-giving embrace of Jesus Christ.  Amen.