The Snow

I woke to fresh snow drifting past my window, soft, slow, and peaceful. Not the harsh, windy kind that stings your face and makes you regret ever stepping foot outside. This was the quiet kind of snow, the tender kind, the “I’m living inside a snow globe” kind. A beautiful, gentle blanket that makes the whole world feel hushed and holy for a moment.

I’ve always liked winter. I’m a mountain-winter kind of girl at heart. Yes, I enjoy beaches, but as a redhead I can only survive so long before the sun decides to make a meal out of me. Winter, though? Winter is a season I don’t dread, it’s one I settle into, one I genuinely enjoy. And it has officially arrived in full force.

Our Husky, of course, sees the snowfall as an invitation to pure, unfiltered joy. This is his weather. He howls with excitement at the door, thrilled to go outside and roll around like he’s auditioning for a snow-dog calendar. Meanwhile, the rest of us stand there freezing our tails off, waiting for him to do his business so we can sprint back inside. He doesn’t understand our lack of enthusiasm, and we certainly don’t understand his gleeful obsession with the cold, but it does make for some pretty hilarious moments.

Still, as much as I complain about standing there shivering, I love watching him in his element. There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing a creature absolutely alive in the environment they were made for. He belongs in the snow. He knows it. And he revels in every second of it, even if it means the rest of us end up begging him to please, for the love of all that is warm, come back inside.

And watching him, completely alive in the place he was built for, it struck me: that must be how we’ll feel in heaven with Jesus. Absolutely in our element. Doing the very things we were created for. Fully alive in an environment that finally matches who we truly are. Reveling in every second of it with the kind of joy that can’t be contained.

Scripture tells us we are not of this world, and there are days, especially lately, when I feel that so deeply. A quiet ache for something more. A longing for the place where everything in me will breathe, Yes… this is home. The place where I’ll feel as free as our snow-loving Husky, knowing I’m exactly where I’m meant to be, doing what I was made to do, and grateful for every moment of it.

The Transfiguration

The days leading up to the mountain were heavy ones, thick with words the disciples didn’t know how to hold. Jesus had begun speaking openly about suffering and death, and His followers didn’t understand it. Not really. Their confusion hung in the air, unspoken but unmistakable. You could see it in their furrowed brows, in the way their steps slowed when He talked that way, in the uneasy glances they exchanged when they thought He wasn’t looking.

So when Jesus invited Peter, James, and John to walk with Him up a mountain, they went without hesitation. They had learned long ago that they didn’t need to understand why He led them somewhere in order to follow. Something in them, something deep, quiet, instinctive, trusted Him. They followed because they wanted to. Because His voice had a gravity to it, a pull that felt like truth itself.

The climb was steep and slow, the early sunlight stretching thin across the rocky path. Their breaths grew shorter as they ascended, the air thinning with the altitude. Dust clung to their sandals. The world below grew smaller, quieter. Jesus walked ahead of them with an ease that didn’t match the terrain, steady and sure-footed, as though mountains had always been His element.

When they reached a flat place near the summit, the disciples likely thought they were there to pray. The silence, the height, the view, it all felt like a natural escape from the weight of the week.

But then everything changed.

Without sound or warning, Jesus’ appearance shifted into something entirely other. One moment, He stood before them looking like the teacher they knew, earthy, dusty, fully human, and the next, His face shone like the sun. Not just bright, but radiant. Light streamed from Him, not onto Him, as if the veil between heaven and earth had been pulled back and glory poured through the opening.

His clothes blazed white, whiter than anything earth could create. White the way lightning is white. White the way stars are white when seen up close.  The disciples were stunned, overwhelmed by a brilliance that felt alive.

Then Moses and Elijah appeared, towering figures of Israel’s story, standing in real flesh and speaking with Jesus. And it wasn’t a brief nod or a momentary greeting. They were in conversation. Engaged. Communicating with Him as if they were old friends reunited after a long separation. It was a meeting across time itself.  Law, prophecy, and Messiah were standing together on a mountaintop while heaven looked on.

Peter, undone by the moment, tried to grasp it in the only way he knew. He rushed forward with the idea of building shelters, places to stay, places to linger. Something in him recognized that he was standing in an environment he wasn’t made for yet but desperately wished he belonged to. Of course he wanted to stay. Of course he wanted to freeze the moment in time. To him, this looked like home.

But before he could finish speaking, a luminous cloud enveloped them. A cloud unlike any earthly mist, thick with presence, pulsing with holiness. The air felt charged. Alive. And then the Voice came.

“This is My Son, whom I love.  With Him I am well pleased.  Listen to Him.”

The power of it drove the disciples to the ground, faces pressed into the dirt. It was fear, yes, but also awe. Reverence. An instinctive response to a presence too great for human strength.  Then, slowly, the moment faded.  The brightness dimmed, the cloud lifted, and the air stilled.  Suddenly, it was quiet, almost eerie in its sudden calm.

And just like that, Moses and Elijah were gone.  Only Jesus remained.

He approached them gently, touched them, and told them not to be afraid. And then, as they gathered themselves, He instructed them not to tell anyone what they had seen until after He had risen from the dead. The words must have confused them even further, Risen? from what?, but they obeyed. 

The walk back down the mountain must have been difficult. Not physically, but emotionally. How do you return to ordinary ground after standing in the middle of glory? How do you process a moment where heaven opened and spoke? Scripture doesn’t tell us what their conversation was like on that descent, but if it had been me, my mind would have been running wild with a million questions, a thousand heartbeats of wonder, and probably not enough courage to ask the biggest ones.

But one thing is clear: the disciples walked down the same mountain they had climbed, 
yet they carried something entirely different inside them.  A memory of brilliance.  A glimpse of the Kingdom.  A longing for the place where they truly belonged.

The kind of longing that stays with a person forever.

In-Between Moments

A day later, the snowing has stopped now, but the cold remains. When the wind picks up outside, it is painfully sharp, the kind that pushes you back indoors without a second thought. Our dog has settled down now that the thrill of fresh snow has passed. Without a new blanket of white to lure him outside, he’s content to curl up and wait for the next storm.

Time felt suspended during the snowfall, like the world exhaled and everything quieted. But now that it’s melting, life snaps back into motion, regular schedules, regular obligations, the usual hum of responsibility. I love those in-between moments when the world slows down, when a good snow blankets everything and makes the ordinary look holy for a little while. Yet once it melts, it almost feels like it never happened at all.

I imagine that’s a bit how the disciples must have felt a few days after coming down from the mountain. How surreal the memory must have seemed. How easily a mind might question: Did I really see that? Did it happen the way I remember? It’s a good thing there were three of them, three witnesses to confirm the unfathomable, because if only one had seen it, they might have wondered whether it had been some kind of dream or vision.

But it wasn’t, it was real.  They saw the law, embodied in Moses.  They saw the prophets, embodied in Elijah.  And standing between them, they saw the fulfillment, Jesus, the Son of God, radiant with a glory the world wasn’t ready to contain. What an encounter.

How impossible it would have been to fully grasp in the moment. I doubt they understood the depth of what they were seeing until many years later, after the resurrection, after the teachings, after the pieces finally locked together into a breathtaking whole. Only then, looking back, would it make perfect sense: they had witnessed the story of Scripture converge into one brilliant, heaven-lit moment.

Wouldn’t you want to go back to a place like that?  To stand again where everything felt true and solid and unmistakably real?  To see it a second time, not to control it, but simply to behold it?  I know I would.

Perhaps Peter would too. Maybe instead of rushing forward with plans to build shelters, he’d just stand in quiet awe, letting the wonder wash over him.  

But life doesn’t let us stay on mountaintops, even the holy ones.  My alarm is set for 5:30 tomorrow morning. The streets are cleared. The world is moving again. And it’s time, time to return to work, to routine, to the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Yet somewhere deep inside, the longing remains, the memory of moments when heaven feels close, when joy feels native, when we catch a glimpse of the world we were made for. Moments that remind us that even as we step back into ordinary days, we belong to something far more extraordinary.