Our Sins

Snowflakes have ruined plans, destroyed armies, and brought about untold devastation

There are blessings that come with living in a part of the world that sees four distinct seasons. There are trials, too, like when the days are scorching or the nights are bitterly cold. But if I were to leave this part of the world, I know I would miss the seasonality of Southern Ontario with its extremely high highs and extremely low lows.

As I write, the hot and humid days of summer have given way to the cool and gray days of autumn. Outside my office window, I can see leaves that have turned brilliant red, yellow, and orange and begun to drift to the ground below. I know that we are not far now from the bitter chill of winter and the arrival of the first snow.

When we receive news of an impending winter storm, I sometimes like to prop a camera in my front window so I can capture a time-lapse. First it captures a single snowflake that gently flutters down and disappears the moment it touches the ground. But more soon follow and with their combined presence they begin to blanket the yard. Over time, it builds up into great banks so that the world is completely transformed and we are locked inside until the plows arrive to clear the streets.

I have sometimes pondered the power of a snowflake. That sounds strange, I’m sure, since a single snowflake is so tiny, so delicate, and so gentle that it can barely be perceived. We have to squint to see its detail, and it will melt in an instant if we so much as breathe upon it. Yet that same snowflake, when combined with others like it, has the power to bring havoc, to collapse roofs, to cause cars to stick fast or spin out, and to even shut down an entire city. Snowflakes have ruined plans, destroyed armies, and brought about untold devastation—snowflakes that by themselves are almost too tiny to see, too light to feel, and too minuscule to be of any concern.

One little sin often doesn’t seem so bad, does it? Like one little snowflake, it can be hard to even perceive one white lie, one irritated word, one lustful glance, one unhealthy craving. It can seem too minor and too innocuous to be worthy of concern. Wouldn’t it be pedantic to put too much thought into the rationale behind a mere peccadillo? Wouldn’t it be puritanical to be concerned with the motives that led to so small a transgression? But just as every winter storm begins with a single flake, every great fall begins with a single sin. That sin may not feel particularly concerning and may not seem to have alarming repercussions, but it is a sin nonetheless. I have seen big rigs spin uselessly and slide into ditches because of mere snowflakes—snowflakes that by themselves weigh no more than thousandths of a gram. I have seen buildings collapse under the weight of them and men collapse as they’ve tried to shovel them.

And so too, little sins can pile up to halt a life, a family, and a church. The man who defrauds his company or the woman who commits adultery has allowed hundreds of small sins to accumulate. It could be that none of those sins seemed all that serious in the moment, but they added up to something incredibly destructive. God rebuked the church in Ephesus for abandoning the love it had at first, but surely this was not a great one-time abandonment as much as it was a thousand small ones—rolled eyes, harsh words, unconfessed sins, lapsed worship. Each was like a snowflake that was almost imperceptible until suddenly it had the power of an atom bomb.

One author* warns that we can sometimes allow ourselves to be great sinners in little things, and I fear that he is right. I fear that we can be too tolerant of what we consider little sins. But just as a single flake drifting from the sky warns of a great storm to come, so a single sin, permitted, tolerated, and shrugged off, warns of a coming destruction. Each of us needs to consider the power of a single little snowflake and the power of a single little sin. 

Article by Tim Challies

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*De Witt Talmage