Article January 16, 2012 Issue

Seeing through the snowflakes

By Mimi Oka

We were crawling along the highway at 20 miles an hour in what the media later described as the blizzard of the century. Fat snowflakes were settling and sticking on the windshield. It was night, the roads were slippery, and there were no lights illuminating the road. My family and I were driving north to ski. We had left New York City at 4:30 that afternoon, oblivious to the weather report of dangerous driving conditions. 

Our destination was more than 250 miles away, and it was clearly going to be a very long drive. I was praying to see that we were in our rightful place, that if we were meant to be on that highway in those conditions, then our presence had to bless us and those around us. We were bearing witness to God’s gentle presence in that blizzard. I was praying to see that all the motorists on the road were moving in God’s universe, that none of us could leave it because God’s good creation is all that exists. 

The Lesson-Sermon that morning in church had included a passage from Isaiah: “The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory” (60:19). I held to that statement, and repeated it out loud as I drove with total concentration on the road ahead. 