No More Stains

Yesterday morning, while doing my morning devotions, I set the six-inch ruler that I was using down on the couch. Not a good idea. For some reason, that ruler likes to attract ink from the pen that I use to underline stuff in my Bible, and that fresh ink was then transported to the cushion. This has happened to me before in the past, but nothing to this magnitude.

You can imagine my frustration! The color of the couch is tan, and the place where the ink was located was right in the middle. So I immediately tried to rub it out with my saliva-covered finger. That, of course, only made it worse! I had to surrender to the fact that I would not be able to get the stain out and I would have to fearfully inform Camille of what had happened.

When she arrived home from work and I told her what had happened, she wasn’t too excited. And she tried using some different stain removers that didn’t seem to do the trick.

Well, when I came down this morning to sit on the couch for my devotions, the stain was nowhere to be found! I looked everywhere on the cushions, wondering if perhaps she re-arranged them to be able to hide the stain. But the stain has magically disappeared! (All right, it probably wasn’t magic, but since Camille didn’t tell me that she was able to remove it, I’ll assume that the “Stain Fairy” came in the middle of the night and got rid of it.)

All this reminds me of that wonderful passage in Isaiah: “Though your sins be as scarlet,” the Lord says, “they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:8). Though we haven’t had a snowfall yet this year, we can still envision that scene. All the dirt and grime that covers the earth disappears under a blanket of fresh and beautiful snow.

And what’s more is, so often we try to use our own saliva-covered fingers to erase our own problems. We try our different humanistic efforts to get rid of the bad habits and sin in our lives. But God longs to come along and, with His own scarlet-and-blood-stained hands, remove the bad habits and sins and selfishness from our lives.

He sure does a better job than the Stain Fairy, I know that!