Snow!
“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow.” Psalm 51:7 Not many sights are as beautiful as fresh-fallen snow blanketing the ground. No wonder David used the image as a picture of the restorative power of God. It’s a truly compelling image.
But, for many of us, we’ve had so much snow this year we fail to see the beauty of it anymore. Especially as it lies in ugly three, four, and five foot heaps gathering more and more dirt. It then becomes a picture of our lives as they appear once stained with sin. The anger, the guilt, the hurt, the pain are all that is left in the wake of what seemed like harmless fun at the time.
Recently, this word-picture was driven home to me as I drove along after yet another snow storm. This one was at least mercifully small leaving only a coating over the ugly, dirty snow of the past several weeks. I was reminded that this is how God sees our lives in the absence of Christ. Dirty, sin-stained souls trying desperately to cover our sin with a thin veiling of good deeds, excuses, and plenty of blame for everyone but ourselves. But ultimately, we’re just lightly covering over the real heart issues and our sin is still peaking through just as visible as ever.
God has a better way in mind though. God wants to remove our sins, not just cover them up. As David wrote so beautifully in Psalm 103:11-12, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Think about that for a moment. The east and the west never meet up. They are complete opposites. You can not go both east and west. God wants to give you a clean slate. He wants to completely remove that ugly, dirty sin from your life leaving room for green grass to grow and spring flowers to bloom.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 2 Corinthians 5:17
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