We're All Humans, Aren't We?

The Grace in Snow

Last week, I talked about attending a service at Mars Hill where my wife and I heard Rob Bell present a sermon on two of the most powerful words in the Christian world: grace and peace. (If you missed the email last week, you can find it in our eLetter archives here along with many other ones. Nifty, huh?)

Well, ever since I heard the sermon, I had been trying to think of examples in which God provides hints of His grace and His peace to today’s broken world, seemingly so far removed from the amazing miracles and events of the Old Testament and the New Testament life of Jesus Christ. The day after I wrote the email, I got one such stunning example that I couldn’t ignore it.

This hint of grace was found in Baghdad, Iraq on Friday, January 11, 2008. It is a land that has been continuously torn apart by bullets and bombs, conflict and sectarian violence, and it has endured nearly five years of war with very little peace.

I am going to step aside and let Associated Press Writer Christopher Chester tell you the story. The full story can be found here.

“After weathering nearly five years of war, Baghdad residents thought they’d pretty much seen it all. But Friday morning, as muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer, the people here awoke to something certifiably new.

“For the first time in memory, snow fell across Baghdad.

“Although the white flakes quickly dissolved into gray puddles, they brought an emotion rarely expressed in this desert capital snarled by army checkpoints, divided by concrete walls and ravaged by sectarian killings – delight. … Morning temperatures uncharacteristically hovered around freezing, and the Baghdad airport was closed because of poor visibility. Snow is common in the mountainous Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, but residents of the capital and surrounding areas could remember just hail.

“‘I asked my mother, who is 80, whether she’d ever seen snow in Iraq before, and her answer was no,’ said Fawzi Karim, a 40-year-old father of five who runs a small restaurant in Hawr Rajab, a village six miles southeast of Baghdad. ‘This is so unusual, and I don’t know whether or not it’s a lesson from God,’ Karim said.

“Some said they’d seen snow only in movies. Talib Haider, a 19-year-old college student, said, ‘A friend of mine called me at 8 a.m. to wake me up and tell me that the sky is raining snow. I rushed quickly to the balcony to see a very beautiful scene. I tried to film it with my cell phone camera. This scene has really brought me joy. I called my other friends and the morning turned to be a very happy one in my life.’

“For a couple of hours anyway, a city where mortar shells routinely zoom across to the Green Zone became united as one big White Zone. As of late afternoon, there were no reports of violence. The snow showed no favoritism as it fell faintly on neighborhoods Shiite and Sunni alike, and (with apologies to James Joyce) upon all the living and the dead.”

Isn’t that amazing? People were so awed with this gift from heaven that violence ended and peace completely reigned for at least a day. The snow covered everything, not showing a speck of favoritism of one group over the other. People were united in their gift. If that isn’t a powerful lesson in God’s grace, I don’t know what else it could be.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

-Matt