It's black and white tonight.  As I gaze out the bay window from my tub, all the world is robed in crystalline white, snow having just fallen fresh upon us.  The clouds have suddenly become reflectors, mirrors of the city lights that the snow caught and threw back up to the heavens.  Against this glowing white the gnarly, spindly black branches of my tall yard trees sway with the wind.  There are other black clumps:  bushes, snow shrouded buildings in the distance, other dark shapes.  The tree whose arms and fingers clank against my window still amazingly has leaves, though with out turning any festive fall color, they slowly morphed from green to black.  Black and white.

It is beautiful, breathtakingly so.  I cracked my window to let the cool air in.   As it entered the room, hovering over the hot bath water, steam appeared in smokey swirls rising upward.  In here, all is touched by the warm golden glow of the candles and mist.  It is a different kind of beauty, somehow more comforting against the colorless but bright landscape outside.  

I'm thankful tonight.  Grateful to be warm, snuggled in my soothing home, but able to look outside at the wonder of God's creation.  A place where contrasts and light alone can wake the soul.  I felt something in me spark, looking at the swaying black trees, against the glowing white of earth and sky.