What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?—

“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind;—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.“
~Francis Thompson “To a Snowflake”

I wish one
could press snowflakes
in a book
like flowers.
~James Schuyler from “February 13, 1975” in Collected Poems

Each snowflake falls alone, settling in together to create sculptures in communal effort. And each is created as a singular masterpiece itself.

We too, as the created, are like each snowflake. Together we change the world, sometimes for better, too often for worse. But each of us have come from heaven uniquely designed and purposed, preciously shaped, hammered, wrought and preserved for eternity through God’s loving sacrifice.

Without God embossed on our surface, we would melt into oblivion between the pages of history.