White as Snow

Last week, I wrote about my sewing struggles. After taking a few days break, I completed my cross body bags and was super pleased with the results. Tragically, while ironing one of the bags, a tiny bit of the blue dye from the lining fabric bled onto the lighter color of the outer floral print fabric! Gaaaaah! (Guess who’s been cured of her pre-washing fabric laziness?) To have battled through all of the measurement and sewing setbacks, only to be stymied at the very end felt so frustrating! “All that work for nothing!” I fumed.

My almost 15 year-old step-baby, Logan, claimed that it was hardly even noticeable. My husband helpfully pointed out that, of course, if a little bit of blue dye had bled, then the whole lining would likely bleed when washed. One of the main selling points for my handcrafted bags was supposed to be their washability! Spilled a little of your iced mocha? No problem! Throw that baby in the wash, and out it’ll come, good as new! I optimistically speculated that, perhaps, washing the bag might actually remove the errant dye from the outer fabric, and, so, into the machine went the bag.

Can you see the blue dye?

Good news! The bag was super sturdy and held up perfectly in the washer and dryer. More good news! None of the blue from the liner further bled onto the outer fabric. Bad news. The errant dye still remained. With a matter-of-fact, hopeful shrug, my 17 year-old step-baby, Brooke, suggested, “Add some lace?” Sigh… 

Sometimes, in my creating, if a project doesn’t go as planned (meaning, if I mess up), and I can’t restore the piece, I try to repair the piece. In this case, I immediately thought, embellishments! So I made two little denim flowers, added sweet little buttons, and sewed the flowers over the blue dye. The finished product is so cute! No one will ever know about my dye catastrophe! But I still know…because I created it.   

One of the flowers is on the back... I might add a few more in different sizes!

The sin in our lives is like my blue dye. Some of it looks small- small enough that we can almost convince ourselves it won’t be noticed. Upon conviction by the Holy Spirit, however, we acknowledge our sin but are sometimes then tempted to try to cover up and hide it (remember Adam and Eve?), and that also almost seems to work. Left unchecked, there is risk of "small" sin bleeding out into other areas of our lives. 

A few weeks ago, in discussing the ever-present nature of God, my Sunday school kids studied the first part of Psalm 139. The kids were asked how it made them feel knowing that God always sees and knows them, inside and out. When the children responded with comments of feeling comfort and peace knowing that there is nowhere we can go where God does not also go, I was blessed by their perspectives, commenting that, I mean, it would be understandable if we, as humans, might feel inclined to shrink under that scrutiny, to feel shame knowing that God sees all our good and bad. 

King David, the author of Psalm 139, demonstrated a heart of immense gratitude knowing that God knew him so completely and intimately, and felt incredible wonder at the realization (verse 6). He recognized that God’s thoughts of him were “precious” (verse 17), and it was that understanding that led him to desire and actually seek out the scrutiny of God, knowing that it was that examination that would enable him to walk in the ways of the Lord (verses 23 & 24).

This heart of David is remarkable considering the grievous sins we all know he committed. But we also know, as written in Psalm 51, that David didn’t try to hide his sin from God. He confessed and asked for forgiveness and recognized that God could and would erase his sin from existence. David cried, 

“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and renew a right spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10-12

David marveled that God would remove his sin entirely, “blotting out” (verses 1 and 9) his iniquities and making him “whiter than snow” (verse 7). Allowing God to deal with and remove the stains of sin from our lives is such a miracle! He doesn’t cover them or hide them, He REMOVES them! 

Coming home from Bible study last Sunday evening, we walked outside to find that it’d started to snow. I and my people hate winter. Like, haaaaaaaaaaate winter. Still, the magic of the soft white flakes floating down from the night sky and covering all the brittle ice and hardened snow gave us pause to appreciate the beauty of the winter scene.

The snow that night, though perfect and pristine in falling, only served to cover up the ugly existence of the hard, crusty, and dirty snow underneath. My little denim button flowers add a sweet embellishment to my cross-body bag, but they hide underneath an ugly dye stain. What an enormous comfort to know that, when the blood of Jesus washes away our sin, we are made perfectly clean again, with our sin removed as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). 

Thank you to all of you who are reading, liking, sharing, and following my tiny endeavor. I have prayed for so very long for opportunities to share my faith. It continues to be my prayer that God will use me to encourage you in your walks with Jesus. Be inspired to look for ways you, too, might disciple others, and always be reminded that you are perfectly made and perfectly loved.