So it snowed this past weekend. We were away from home, visiting Indianapolis to see our niece’s volleyball tournament, but we got plenty of snow there in addition to what we found filling our driveway when we got home. The amazing thing to me is that we still have remnants of snow despite highs well above freezing every day since.

Once you push a bunch of snow into a pile, it becomes pretty hard to melt. A few years ago, we had an unusually snowy winter, and all of the snow from our local insurance giant’s corporate parking lots got piled onto one empty lot. For a while, I wondered if that pile was going to make it to July.

It is easy enough to explain why snow melts more slowly when a lot of it is clumped together, but I think that seeing such phenomena should make us think about the piles and clumps in our lives that become harder to get rid of.

When someone does us wrong, we have a choice: forgive now or hang on and pile up every little thing that person does to us until we collapse under the weight. It isn’t easy to forgive that one wrong, but every grievance we add to the pile make it harder to let go of all of the others.

When we stray down a wrong path, saying or doing something we know we should not, it’s not easy to repent and correct our course. But how much harder does it become if we repeat that wrong, even let it form a habit?

Of course, piling on isn’t always bad. Read a Bible verse once, and it won’t be easy for that verse to influence your life. Spend time in the Bible every day, reading verses that God points out over and over until they are deep in your mind and heart. and Satan will be hard-pressed to melt that influence out of your life no matter what fires he brings to bear.

What are the piles that you need to avoid building? What are the thin layers that need to have a few shovelfuls added to prevent melting?