White Washed

I chuckle each time I hear songs speaking of Jesus washing away our sins and making us “white as snow” or anytime I see the 4wd control in my car that gives me an option for “snow”. This week the weather has cooled down to high 80’s / low 90’s, but a week ago we were getting to 110 degrees and snow does NOT happen here! I have heard that once or twice due to freak storm conditions we have had some hail, but I have yet to see it.

This week my thoughts went to a different analogy for our sins being cleansed. Instead of being washed white as snow maybe we are “white washed” and made new and clean. As the roofing projects on our compound were completed we had some pretty ugly looking buildings with new cement and repairs in many places (our buildings are all cement cinder block). I found many bags of whitewash in our shed from over 5 years ago and was told I needed to “see if they were active”. I was not exactly sure what to expect and google was not a lot of help, but if you check out this video of what happened when I added water and stirred a little I think you will agree it was definitely “active”. After establishing the whitewash was “active” it was time to contract some employees to sweep off the dirt, debris and ick then mix up the chemicals and wash everything clean to make it new.

As I prayed on what to share with you this week I was brought to this process and our spiritual walk. We come to Jesus filthy, icky and unable to cleanse ourselves. When we hear about Jesus and what He did for us we cannot just take the dry, powdery stuff and in our own strength try and make ourselves clean. Salvation requires power that only comes from the Holy Spirit. May I go so far as to say our salvation is a chemical reaction that changes our composition and then makes us new and different. Only after this reaction, this response to the power of the Holy Spirit can we be washed clean like these new looking buildings. And, this process just like white washing our property can be pretty messy! This analogy is not perfect, these buildings only look new and clean but they will get dirty again pretty soon and they will continue to need repairs and require white washing again and again. BUT, for those of us who truly receive and respond to Jesus He has washed our sins away and made us pure, clean and new once and for all. When it comes to our salvation, there is no need to rinse, re-activate and repeat.