"Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord,
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow."
You've gotta love the Lord. This is one of my favourite verses in the whole bible. It is God letting me know that it's OK for me to speak up. To say, on occasion, a respectful but deeply heartfelt WTF. To make my case, to disagree, to shout and stamp and scream and rage. To give my opinion (He can take it).
It's been snowing here again. Unusual for us in the UK. We've had a spectacular 2 inches where we are and, even with that and as snow does, it transforms everything.
The quality of light is different through the curtains when you wake up to it. It is brighter, whiter, clearer, stronger.
Where the day before was bare branches and mud and stones and life writ drear, SNOW has transformed it all into something extraordinary. Something beautiful. It has covered everything completely. Changed the shape of things, softened sound.
Views we know like the back of our hand are suddenly new. Newly known, newly seen adorned in white. Different. Our daily walk doesn't feel like an everyday activity. It's new, and you gasp at the loveliness of it. The way the light glances off the snow creating new patterns, new vistas, new angles, new shapes. Everything is the same yet snow has completely transformed it. I cannot see, feel or hear things in the same way.
And this is what God says He does with my sin. He takes all that is bloody and bleak and self-serving and wounded and wilful and - when I ask Him - He blankets it with white. He forgives me.
His covering has transformed me and continues to transform me into someone new. Truly me, and newly me.
Unlike natural snow, this supernatural blanketing of purity and newness does not melt away either. It's eternal.
Walking through the woods this morning, I was breath taken. Awe-struck at what snow can do. How it changes everything so utterly. So masterfully. So purely. How it catches us off guard with its power to create beauty out of absolutely everything.
Now if I can just remember that about myself, and about others too. God can do it.
We can all be changed.
And in the twinkling of an eye.
jsg/march 18