We turned the corner to our house, and knew immediately that something had changed.
We’d been visiting family for three days. Family who lived 400 miles south.
They had complained about how cold it was. They couldn’t believe that it got all the way down to 40 degrees one night!
As we turned the corner to our house, the outside temperature was 15 degrees with a wind chill of 12 below zero.
And the “something” that had changed was our driveway.
It was covered with snow. Several 
inches of snow.
Normally I wouldn’t be excited about a snowy driveway at the end of a 400 mile trip. But this was the first real snowfall of the year. I hadn’t even used the snow blower yet.
Snow Blowers! Power tools for the winter! Yes!
As soon as we got out of the car, I gassed up the snow blower.
Never mind that the gas was left over from last year. I was sure the snow blower would start. Somehow it did. On the first try!
Up and down, back and forth. Twenty minutes later the driveway was cleared.
I stood back and looked at it.
Actually it wasn’t really clear all the way to the edge. Maybe next I should use the shovel.
Carefully, I went over the driveway with the shovel, making sure it was clear to its very edges.
Then I stood back and looked again. It was pretty good now. But still, there was a light skiff of snow…
What if I blew away those last little bits of snow with the leaf blower?
Yes! The leaf blower! Another winter power tool!
Not a flake of snow would remain when I finished.
I finished and stood surveying my winter masterpiece.
My wife came out and stood beside me.
“Supposed to snow again tonight”, she said. “Several inches.”
I unplugged the cord to the leaf blower, disassembled some of its parts, and put everything in a storage box.
“Better keep that where you can get it”, my wife said.
“No”, I replied, “it’ll be good in the box till next summer”. It had been fun cleaning the driveway the first time, but…
I looked around the neighborhood. All the driveways were clean.
By March nobody would bother to clear the driveways for anything less than half a foot of snow. We’d use our cars to barrel through the drifts at the bottom of the driveway. We’d get up enough sped to make sure we wouldn’t lose traction halfway to the garage.
In December real men compete to see who has the cleanest driveway. In March, real men can’t even remember where they put the snow shovel. In March real men just jump into the car and “put the pedal to the metal”.
It seems to me there’s a Biblical metaphor hiding somewhere in this story, but I’m not sure. Could it be that we can get so used to sin…like the snow that keeps falling—that we let it into our lives at some point and hardly even notice anymore?
Or could it be that this story just highlights the fact that the first snowfall is a lot more exciting to the little boy lurking inside me than the 100th snowfall?
Maybe it’s both. What do you think? Tell us about your neighborhood…
