White As Snow

 

 

This past week, it snowed in my part of the country.  Now, I’m not a huge snow fan, haven’t been one since 1995 when D.C. got one ice/snow storm after another, but I do think it’s wonderfully beautiful when it is falling and before civilization turns it into a mud-spattered slush.  The whiteness and brilliance of new fallen snow reminds me of how our Lord said that our sins would be “white as snow.”

This verse is so important and powerful.  In biblical days, the color scarlet was a permanent dye made from eggs of the coccus ilicis, an insect found in Spain and other countries east of the Mediterranean.  Once dyed, nothing could wash it out; neither rain, dew, long wearing nor washing.  It was permanent.

Of course this permanency represent our sins.  Nothing we do can ever remove the stain of sin from our hearts.  No efforts of man what so ever, whether it is tears, religious rites, or prayers, can ever cleanse us of our scarlet-stained sins.

Only through the Grace of God will the permanency of this stain be removed.  That deep, fixed stain, which no human power can remove, will one day be taken away, and we will be cleansed.  We will be as white as the new fallen snow; an emblem of innocence and purity.

That stain, that awful, terrible, appalling stain, will be completely removed, and the wool will be restored to its original whiteness.