by Paul Gallico
She saw that all her life she had been called upon to serve. She had watered a wild flower, sheltered a frog, speeded a fish, turned the miller’s wheel to make a loaf of bread, put out a fire, and held up the bows of the largest liner.
How thoughtful and tender, how exquisitely beautiful, careful and loving was the plan behind all that had happened to her from the very day she was born. And she knew now that never, not for one single, solitary instant, had she been forgotten or overlooked by Him.
For the last time she wondered about the what and why of this world into which she had been born. There had been her mountain, the village, the valley, the river, the lake and the ocean. Each had seemed so huge and yet how small they were when she considered the vast sun, the hanging moon and all the stars in the sky.
As the earth was to the firmament, one tiny wandering sphere, so had she been but one lost droplet added to the waters that led everywhere to the sea.
There were, then, the great and the small, the beautiful and the ugly, the many and the few, the proud and the humble. Yet she knew now that none was so poor, so tiny, none so humble, unseen or unsung that its role in the Great Design was not as important to Him as that of the most glorious and mighty. The snowflake and the sun were one in significance in the scheme of Creation. A billion interlocking stars were no greater or more loved by Him than the simplest crystal or droplet that fell to earth. There was no one or nothing that did not matter.
And as she thought of the exquisite harmony of the universe in which she had been sent to play her part, peace and contentment came to Snowflake.
Fainter and fainter beat her heart. Soon she would be Snowflake no more, but only a part of the vast, silent spaces of the heavens, a filmy fragment of an autumn cloud.
But in this final moment she experienced once more the warm, tender and all-embracing love that she had felt when first she tumbled from the sky so long ago.
It lulled her with its sweetness, calmed her fears and filled her through and through with joy.
She knew then that the final mystery of Who it was had created her, watched over her and loved her steadfastly as He loved all things both great and small might never be solved for her. It no longer seemed important to her to know, for soon, Whoever or Whatever, she would be a part of Him.
And the last thing she could remember before the sun drew her up into the heart of the cloud above was that all about her the air and the sky seemed to ring with the tender and loving words—“Well done, little Snowflake. Come home to me now.”
Table of Contents
SNOWFLAKE
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