September 8 Isaiah 1:18

“‘Come now, let us argue this out,’ says the Lord. ‘No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool.’”

When my firstborn son was two, I naively bought him a white henley shirt because it was a good deal and because it matched all his pants. As any more experienced mom knows, white shirts on toddlers notoriously attract every stain and stubbornly hold onto the stains, even after a regular wash. At the time, I hadn’t yet discovered the wonders of Oxyclean which takes out almost any stain if presoaked. At my wits’ end then, I bought the Clorox Bleach Pen and applied the gel directly to a stain which hadn’t come out, no matter what else I tried. And it worked! The shirt looked brand new again.

Since Isaiah is one of my favorite books of the Bible, I recalled today’s verse as I thrilled that the stain was gone. There was no trace, no evidence a stain had ever existed. And I thought, If only I saw myself as God sees me—fully forgiven, clean as freshly fallen snow.

One attribute I didn’t learn much about from my family background was forgiveness. My dad used to say he had to pay a penance for his poor choices; my mom found it difficult to teach me to forgive those who had broken up the marriage. So my dad had a hard time forgiving himself for his grave mistakes, and my mom had a hard time forgiving others for terribly hurtful sins. Now that I’m an adult and a parent, I can really empathize with both of them in those past struggles. I struggle myself with both sides of forgiveness, and I’m trying to work through them with God’s grace.

What stands out to me today in this verse is that God invites us to come to him to argue it out, to sort out the problems so that we are reconciled to him. We can’t come clean unless it’s with his help—particularly about the most destructive sins we’ve ever committed. And when we’re forgiven, God sees us as he sees Jesus—perfectly holy. That’s amazing!

Is there any sin that you need to come to the Lord to confess, so you can be as clean as freshly fallen snow?

Copyright 2009