Everyone has heard or read somewhere the fact that each and every snowflake is unique, whether you heard it as you looked out the front window of your living room, sitting by the fire with your loved ones on the first or one hundredth snow of the year, or perhaps said as an encouragement from a parent, grandparent, teacher, or mentor to remind you that you yourself are as unique as a snowflake, that there is truly only one of you in the whole world just as there is no snowflake like the other. It’s a true fact, regardless of how it was presented to you or how many times you’ve heard it. If you’re anything like me you’ve heard it hundreds of times and it’s far from the first thing that you think of when you look out your window at the snow falling lightly and silently to cover the ground, not because we believe it to be untrue but simply because the intricacy of it is sometimes lost in the sheer vastness of it all. We don’t often look at snowfall as each snowflake but as a whole, as the giant blanket of white on the ground, as the symbol of winter finally here, as the feeling of Christmas in the air, as the peaceful sight of it all drifting slowly down from the sky.
They are unique, yet at the same time they are all just snowflakes, just frozen flecks of white, in the same way that each of us are unique yet at the same time we are all human, all people, all of us with loves and hates, joys and pains, past lives and future plans. We all have desires, fears, and passions like every other person. We are all the same, and yet we are all very different. We are all very different, and yet we are all the same.
A snowflake’s uniqueness, the wonder of its difference from the others, is at its realest when you observe it closely. Maybe you’ve done as I’ve done, standing in the middle of a snowfall, reached out a gloved hand to let a small snowflake land on the fabric of your mitten, brought it up close to your face and looked at it, really looked at it, and have seen with your own eyes the intricate and fragile pattern of it. And if you were to look up, you’d see that you’re standing in a field or street or yard covered in the snow, see that you are surrounded by billions and trillions of these tiny, intricate creations. What an amazing realization it is when you stand there looking back and forth between the small snowflake on your glove and the seemingly infinite number of snowflakes making up the sea of white all around you, the realization of that which we already know but rarely comprehend, the realization of the almost unbelievable uniqueness of each and every one of those billions of snowflakes. The vastness of all creation and all the world as a whole silently stares you in the face. Science can tell the reasoning, the “why” it’s all so unique, but the implications of such intimate creation are nearly supernatural, nearly beyond comprehension.
We are, all of us, also just as unique while being the same. We are all “wonderfully made” as David proclaims, just a breath after he gives us this intimate image of God knitting us together each in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139). Yet I think our uniqueness and our sameness are the inverse of the uniqueness and sameness of a snowflake. Every snowflake looks exactly the same as you stand in your warm living room by the fire looking out the window at the field of snow, and it’s only upon closer examination that we see the spectacular differences in each. The closer you get to each snowflake the more real and intricate each becomes. But not so with us. The first evidence in our uniqueness is immediately evident in everything about us, in our hair color, our height, our voice, our smile, our skin color, our choice in clothes, the sound of our laugh. If we were to dig deeper, to lean in closer as we lean in closer to the snowflake on our mitten, we see even more differences, even if they seem inconsequential. Sarah loves strawberries, Jeff laughs at everything, Molly is from Boston.
The depth of our differences goes even deeper, more meaningful. The memory of the smell of our first-grade classroom. The inside jokes we have with a friend. A dream we had when we were young, the details of which we can still remember as vividly as if it were last night.
Lean in closer and still we find more differences. Adam wants to be a small business owner with his family name in 10-foot-high letters across the front of it. Lily wants to be a surgeon, wants to tell the patient’s worried family that everything is going to be alright. Brooke wants to be a stay-at-home mom and work on writing her first book.
All of us have deep needs and wants and desires. In a way, they define who we are, just as much as our love of strawberries, our quickness to laugh, our hometown defines who we are. That is what you see in each snowflake only once you look at its deepest level. And it may seem that it’s the same with us, that we are all different even as we look at the deepest of the deep areas that make us who we are. But if you stop looking so hard and just start looking you might see it: we are the opposite of snow fall, initially the same but different. We are initially different but, in the end, the same.
There was a coffee shop I used to go to nearly every day to drink and read and relax. One day, a couple tables away from me, I noticed a man sitting by himself as he nervously greeted the waiter in faltering English, quietly ordered two coffees, and quietly sat there drinking one. He sat for a few minutes before another man walked in, looked around, and saw the man sitting there alone. The man sitting saw the man standing, and both of their faces broke into the widest of smiles as they walked towards each other and embraced like brothers reuniting after the war had separated them. I could hear them talking not in the faltering English I had heard before but in another language I didn’t know. But this I do know: the nervous, timid man I saw sitting quietly waiting alone was gone, and in his place was a man sitting with his friend, talking and laughing and sharing a joy that was so deep and so pure that all the powers of heaven and hell couldn’t hold it back.
Days later, I was sitting in my usual spot when a mother walked in carrying her baby and holding the hand of her toddler daughter, who was walking next to her. Her young daughter had been chattering away as they walked up the pavement to the front door, her words made silent by the sheet of glass making the windows. But as they stepped into the shop, the cold winter air blowing in behind them and making us all glance up, the little girl fell silent, looking around at all of us looking up at them. There was a pause, the heavy kind of silence that comes with all of us remaining in our own little worlds, when the girl spoke. “My name’s Hannah!” she shouted to us all, with a smile as wide as the Empire State Building is tall. And that heavy silence, the weight of all of us hiding in our own little worlds, our own tables and books and drinks, shattered as we all laughed and smiled, as a few of us called back, “Hello, Hannah!” at the little girl who brought the power to break our individual worlds into one great shared world. You’d have been hard pressed to find a person without a smile on their face for the next few minutes as Hannah and her mother ordered drinks.
On another day, I sat in my corner and noticed a woman sitting in the opposite corner alone with a book in her hands, which means she’s by no means alone. As she sat and read the book, I saw her turn a page and wipe a tear from her cheek as she read. I saw her head softly nodding up and down as she silently read something on the page that made her soul say “Yes” not quite as silently. I looked up at her as I saw her read tiny markings on a page that had apparently, somehow, shown her something in herself that was so real and so vivid and so personal that she couldn’t help but silently weep in her little corner.
We may all be different, we may be friends from a different country finally reunited, we may be named Hannah or we may not be, we may be touched by something we read so much that our heart may cry out along with our tears. But whether we are those things or a thousand other things, we, all of us, are the same because we all want the same thing: to be known. We all want to be known in a way that banishes the timid man inside us who sits quietly waiting for his coffee, want to be known like a man in a foreign country feels known when someone speaks his same language, is from the same town halfway across the world, who knows him and his life intimately. We all want to be known as Hannah wanted to be known, who walked into a room filled with faces and voices and people she had never known and decided that those faces and voices and people should know her, should know her name, should be her friend because everyone needs a friend. We all want to be known in the way that a woman feels known when an author speaks words so applicable and so relatable to her life that her soul can’t help but ache and groan and weep for the comfort of it, the familiarity of it. After the initial uniqueness of us all, the truth of the sameness that hides in plain sight is this: we all want to be known. Truly known.
The book of Luke tells us about a man named Zacchaeus who was small in stature and not only disliked but hated by most everybody who knew him, and not for lack of reasons. He was the chief tax collector in Jericho, which was an official way of saying he was a professional thief, overtaxing the people and skimming off the top a generous cut for himself. You didn’t eat with him, you didn’t drink with him, you didn’t invite him to your home for parties. He was public enemy number one, and, honestly, he didn’t seem to mind. One day, Zacchaeus hears that a man named Jesus was coming to town. Shops were closing early for the day, homes were clearing, everyone was heading to the edge of town to see this man named Jesus as he passed through. Zacchaeus wants to know what the big hubbub was about but, being as short as he was, can’t see over the heads of the crowd waiting for Jesus. Given his reputation, it’s no surprise that no one’s willing to let him through. So, he does the only thing he can think to do, which is to climb the sycamore tree next to him so he can see.
As Zacchaeus sits perched in the sycamore with his legs wrapped around the trunk just to stay up, he sees a group come around the corner and, at the middle of the group, a man who surely has to be this Jesus everyone was talking about. As the group and the man get closer, the man looks up and locks eyes with Zacchaeus and, seeing him sitting in the tree, says the one thing that had the power to bring Zacchaeus down from that sycamore: his name. “Zacchaeus,” the man named Jesus says, “come down here and get your spare bedroom ready, I’m staying with you tonight.” The crowd mumbles that Jesus must have the wrong person. Jesus lets his silence speak for itself.
I don’t know what Zacchaeus expected to see or to hear as he perched in that tree, but what he sees is the Son of God, and what he hears is salvation in the form of his name. The sound of his name coming from Jesus’ lips is enough to make him fly out of that tree and fall down before Christ, is enough to spur him on to give back everything he’d stolen and then some. And as he stands there in front of Jesus, it’s to him that Christ speaks and not to the crowd when he says, “This is salvation, you son of Abraham. This is what I’m about. Don’t you forget it.” And he doesn’t.
Zacchaeus climbed into that tree a sinner and climbed out a saint. “Zacchaeus.” The Messiah calls him by name.
Jesus is used to our grumbling, heaven help us, and not least of all from his closest circle of friends and disciples. When his friend Lazarus dies, Jesus hears it from Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, as they say, “If you had been here, this wouldn’t have happened,” because blame eases pain if only temporarily. He doesn’t deny it. Instead, he weeps. He weeps for the loss of a beloved friend, he weeps for the pain he sees reflected in the eyes of those around him, he weeps for the name that once was so full of life but is now dead and buried. “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). It’s the shortest verse in the Bible, yet the sound of it rings throughout our souls. As Jesus weeps, he walks up to the tomb and calls out, “Lazarus, come out!” If you picture Jesus’ voice as anything other than choked with emotion, raw with grief, weaker than it is strong, then I imagine you picture it wrong. And as Lazarus walks out of the grave, I imagine even more tears from our Lord. “Lazarus.” The Messiah calls him by name.
I can’t read the story of Lazarus without thinking of Christ calling my name instead. I think we would all do well to think of it like that, with our own name being called as Jesus calls us perhaps not from a literal grave but certainly from the grave of our sins. With that same voice choked with tears Jesus calls our name into the graves that we have dug for ourselves. “Ellie!” he calls. “Jack, come out!” “Allison, for the love of all things holy, come out.” He weeps when we do. And he weeps when we don’t.
Christ knows each of us just as he knew Zacchaeus, that sinner in the sycamore tree, who he knew well enough to see the Kingdom of God waiting to be awoken in him. Christ knows each of us just as he knew his friend Lazarus, who he knew well enough to see that death wasn’t enough to hide him from the grace of God. Christ knows us in these same ways. He knows what has yet to awaken in us. He knows we are not yet dead enough that his mercy and love cannot bring us back to life.
Christ knows how different we all are on the surface, and he knows us at our most intimate. He knows our love of strawberries, our quickness to laugh, our hometown. He knows us like the man from a foreign country felt known when someone who spoke his language and knew his culture embraced him. He knows us like little Hannah wanted to be known when she shouted out her name for all to hear. He knows us like the woman reading the book felt known by the author, because he is the Author who authored us all, who created the intricate intimacies that make us individual.
If you dive deep, if you swim down to the deep end of who we are, deep enough that our toes can’t touch the bottom, we are no longer different because we all want and need the same thing: we all want to be known. Thank heavens for that, because our God is a god who knows us and knows us well. He is a god who calls us by name.