Scooping Out the White Stuff

Thoughts from Pastor Larry Peters of Grace Lutheran Church, Clarksville, TN.

We got 6-8 inches of snow last night. While for some of you that is nothing, for a city in the South it is like a major heart blockage. Everything has shut down. Where I should have been with a new member class this morning, I am at home. Where I could have been relaxing, I have been shoveling. It should be about 32 degrees today and warmer tomorrow.... this too shall pass...

When I went out this morning, there were no tracks but for the birds at the feeder and squirrels trying to open the seed feeders. It was pristine. The roof was covered. The sidewalks had disappeared into the snow. The driveway was not even visible. It was a perfect blanket of snow. This does not happen often down here in Tennessee. So before I started to spoil it all, I stopped to survey the picture.

“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” How true these words are as you look upon the scene this morning. The grass lay hidden. The bare spots on the lawn had disappeared. The ivy by the tree was disguised by the snow. It was all there but hidden under the covering of snow — so that they eye could no longer see what had been or what was. Only what is...

In Christ God hides our sin from His eyes. Like this perfect blanket of white snow, the righteousness of Christ covers us over. Oh that we could see ourselves as God does see us in Christ. But we can’t and we won’t. Because we are still mortals, because we still live within this veil of sin, because our old Adam continues to pull us away from God’s truth and reality... we do to ourselves what I did to that beautiful morning snow scene — we dig up the hidden and suddenly it is all dirty again.

Each scoop of the snow off the sidewalk and driveway exposed something dark and dirty. Each shovel of snow hurled on to the grass, littered the whiteness of that snowy blanket with the dirt from underneath — bits of sunflower seeds and hulls, dirt and leaves, they all had been hidden until I scooped them up and turned over the white to expose the darkness underneath. I thought I was doing something good and necessary but after I was finished I wondered... what had been pristine and white in its purity was now stained and dirty.

Is this not what we do every day? God has us perfectly covered but we dig and dig until all we see is dark, dirty, and ugly. Though He has planted us in Christ our natures still fight and rebel — we arrogantly through on top of the white blanket all the dirt that was underneath. Our pride refuses to let it lie. Our sinful natures will not be content until they are obvious again. Our dirt will not be silent under the cover of Christ’s righteousness.

Is this not why daily contrition and sorrow over sin must continue to reclaim what was and was tossed away? Is this not why we must daily repent of our sin and reclaim the righteousness of Christ — that which we cast off as casually as the blanket whose warmth we reject even on a cold night?

I did what I thought I must in spoiling that perfect white snow covered morning... but in the end I knew what I must still spoiled what had been... Sin whispers into our eyes every justification for casting off the white blanket of Christ’s righteousness but in the end our guilt reminds what we always knew... we did what we should not have done... Oh, that we might live contended within that white garment... Lord, give me a heart content to be covered by and to live under the covering of the righteousness of Christ...