A Snowfall and a Classroom Prayer

Irina could not keep her eyes on the teacher.

Staring beyond the dirty windows of her classroom, she was mesmerized … by snowflakes.  A veritable scarcity in the coastal city of Odessa, these lacy little diamonds danced and sparkled in the dreary sky, winking at the ten-year old, teasing her mercilessly.

Snow in these parts was rarer than bread.  If you stood in line long enough, you could always come away with a couple stale loaves, but these white flakes of magic could not be found anywhere, no matter how long you waited.

The young girl’s heart pounded.  Soon, it would be gone.  Visions of snowballs and snowforts melted in her mind with the prospects of the melting snow, leaving behind nothing but the lifeless, brown earth of Odessa … all because she and her classmates were held hostage to these mind-numbing, never-ending lectures.

This was atheist instruction class and this was Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Union. 

Education for the Communist leader represented Russia’s greatest and most sustainable hope for the future.  It was the mechanism that would mold young idealogues in the image of the revered Lenin and most of the schoolteachers wanting a part of this glorious destiny would preach and teach the state’s doctrine tirelessly, relentlessly attacking those religious myths that, in spite of years of indoctrination, would not melt away.

The students had been told about a Baptist lady who had placed her child in an oven, roasting it to death.  Some of the older students performed a piece of drama that portrayed priests as pathetic and foolish.

But little Irina was a thinker beyond her years and to her, the whole thing didn’t seem fair. 

“Everyone’s against God,” she mused.  “The Young Pioneers, the teachers, the speakers on the radio – the whole country.  Even in schoolyard games, we are not allowed to gang up on one person.”

And it seemed unceasingly curious that they all worked so hard against someone who really wasn’t there anyway.

“God doesn’t exist,” the instructor said again.  “Only silly, ignorant old women believe that.”

Can’t they tell they are giving themselves away, she thought.  Adults tell you there are no ghosts or gremlins.  They tell you once or twice, and that’s it.  But with God, they tell you over and over again.  So He must exist and He must be very powerful for them to fear Him so greatly.

This line of logic led her back to the subject at hand … snow.

“Ok, God,” she said, “if You did not exist, we wouldn’t have to listen to this lecture, so it’s Your fault we’re sitting here missing the snow.”

And then, almost as an afterthought, “If You’re so powerful, make it keep snowing!”

That was Irina Ratushinskaya’s first prayer …

And that was the day white flakes fell like manna from Odessa’s gray skies for three solid days.  In fact, it was the city’s largest snowfall in sixty years.  School was cancelled and Irina and her friends frolicked in the mounds of sparkling crystals, laughing hysterically as these sweet kisses from heaven fell graciously on their glowing, red faces.

In the midst of this winter party, the young lass found her mind racing, delirious with emotion and wonder.  She pondered this God that her teachers denied, the One who could make snow fall, even in official Communist airspace.

She began talking to Him, secretly, mostly late at night, asking endless questions – not politely, but with passion and persistence.

And a relationship began between a little Russian girl and the God who is there, a relationship that endures to this day.

Though prayers are outlawed in the classroom – though God Himself be outlawed in an entire country – the human spirit can still find Him if it seeks Him … and wise men, and women, do still seek Him.

Brian Schroeder is the former Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, an ordained minister and founder/president of The ChrisCorps Association (bschroeder081858@gmail.com)