snow piles

I admit it: I'm a people watcher. I love just watching people travel to and fro from stores, walking at the malls, or just walking down the street. Today, during my lunch hour, I dropped through the drive thru and parked in the parking lot of the local grocery store to enjoy my lunch and participate in a little people watching.

While wrapping up my chicken sandwich and preparing to tackle my chili with hot sauce, I noticed these huge piles of snow that were deposited all across the parking lot. With all of the snow that we've had in the area, snow plows have no where to go with the snow other than to mound it up in huge piles all across the parking lots. It's like someone deposited little white mountains all over the city.

What's interesting to me about these piles of snow is that they seem to last forever. Even with the slow onset of warmer weather, these piles of snow seem to be unaffected. They take absolutely forever to melt largely because they keep themselves cold. There is so much snow piled on top of other snow that the inner core of that pile remains below freezing long after the surrounding temperature has risen.

Those piles of snow reminded me of the risk that you and I run. We have a way of surrounding ourselves with people that keep us "below freezing" for as long as possible.

If we tend to be pessimistic, we surround ourselves with others who are also pessimistic.
If we tend to be a gossip, we surround ourselves with other gossips.
If we are negative and whiny people, then that's who we gravitate towards.

The Bible gives us some pretty clear instruction on this idea in Proverbs 13:20 and 1 Corinthians 15:33.

What if, in an effort to really honor God with our lives we "unpiled" ourselves from those that were keeping us wrapped up in sin. If we find ourselves in a pile of negativity, gossip or whatever, let's choose to spread ourselves out and let the Son melt us down.