As for many of you, this past week in Auburn, Indiana, has been filled with wind and snow and very cold temperatures. And lots of snow shoveling. At least for me. My neighbors might be correct to assume that I have some sort of snow removal obsession disorder. Not long after the last flake floats to the ground (or sometimes a little bit before it makes its final landing), I am out to clear the driveway and sidewalks of the wicked white stuff. Heaven forbid if I have to leave the garage while there’s still snow on the driveway. Those nasty ice tracks become deadly slip traps for the next many days. So, yeah, I am sometimes obsessed with ridding our hard surfaces of that frozen menace.

We have lived in the real snow country of the mountains of California and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where to let the falling snow get too far ahead of you is to never catch up.  I come by my compulsive behavior honestly.

Not all our neighbors share my obsession, however, as their sidewalks and driveways become obstacle courses of icy ruts and slippery concrete. Whether it is good for them to slip slide away on their way to work every morning is theirs to decide, however. Their inattention to the fine art of snow removal is not good for me, that is for sure. Filled with disdain and self-righteousness, I find myself judging my neighbor.

Surely, I think, King Solomon would join me in condemning my neighbor with his driveway a frigid stew of slush and ice. Solomon may not have dealt with delinquent snow shovelers, but it doesn’t take much to apply his description of the sluggard with his overgrown vineyard to my neighbors with their under-plowed driveways. “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest…”  You can read it for yourself:

I passed by the field of a sluggard,
by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,
and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns;
the ground was covered with nettles,
and its stone wall was broken down.
Then I saw and considered it;
I looked and received instruction.
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man. Proverbs 24:30-34

O, my sluggardly neighbors with their lack of sense.

And, O, my judging heart and my log-infected eye. Jesus cautions us to beware of practicing our righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. (Matthew 6:1) Now, I can’t avoid having my neighbors see my meticulously cleared driveway, but I can avoid my smug feeling of superiority. I might even shovel my neighbor’s sidewalk because it is a good thing to do.

In fact, whether it is my neighbor’s sidewalk or ours, the timely removal of snow is a good thing for lots of good reasons. I need not repent of my devotion to my snow shovel. But I do need to repent of my judgment on those who are less obsessed than I am.

Earlier this week I came across one of Paul’s closing admonitions to the Galatians. “Let us not grow weary of doing good,” he wrote with no reference to snow removal. At about that time the wind began to gust and the lake effect snow began to fall. And I realized that I am growing weary of doing good.

What is it? We hope the groundhog does not see his shadow on Tuesday morning?