A white blanket has covered Oklahoma the past few days, stretching out across fields and atop houses and oil wells. The snowfall has been a shock to many, declared the first “blizzard” that I can remember in my 22 years in this state. Children are making snow angels and building snow forts; adults are either skipping work or worrying about how to drive in snow (these are cowboys, not Eskimos).
The snow has been welcomed, covering an otherwise plain landscape with a fresh, spotless sheet of white. Whereas the fields were a yellow-brown color yesterday, they now glisten flawlessly. The beauty of snow is that it causes everything it covers—no matter how ugly the bottom layer may be—to look lovely.
Sometimes I wish the ugliness of the hidden layers of my heart could be as pure as a blanket of snow, just like David prayed in Psalm 51: “Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7, TNIV). It seems the pressures of daily life and the temptations in this world try to turn my heart a shade of grey instead of the perfect white that I know it can be through Christ.
But the beauty of God’s snowfall on our lives is that His forgiveness doesn’t just conceal as a fresh snowfall does. After a few days of snow, the beauty melts away and all that remains are pothole-filled streets and mushy fields of mud and snow. The ugliness that the snow disguised usually ends up looking even worse afterwards.
When God forgives us, He gently washes away our sins before He covers us in a cloak of purity. Some of us (myself included) appear to be good Christians, but aren’t living in the bright purity He’s called us to. We need Him to wash the shades of grey off our hearts. Others have blatant acts of sin they’ve committed.
God revealed the hearts of the Israelites in Isaiah 1:18 when He said, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as the snow” (TNIV). Their hearts were filled with obvious rebellion, and God was comparing their sins to the guilty hands of a bloodstained murderer.
No matter the shade of our sin, our loving Father doesn’t just conceal our wrongdoings and hidden sins; He brings those to light and cleanses them in a way that only He can. And after cleansing us, He blankets our lives in purity for mankind to see, much like a winter snow upon the fields. If we allow Him, He will make us as pure as a fresh snowfall. And His purity is one that doesn’t melt away.
