As I drove home from the office, I had to reach for my sunglasses. The bright sunlight bouncing off the solid white landscape was blinding.
There is a beauty and a peaceful quietness that envelops a city when five inches of snow falls in eight hours. And it doesn’t matter what the landscape looked like the day before. A snow-blanketed junk yard or trash heap looks as beautiful as rolling hills or a pine forest because all you can see is the snow.
The same is true for the trash heap that is our lives. The mess we’ve made of things becomes quiet and peaceful when it is covered over by a blanket of God’s grace. What was visible the day before is now forgotten as our once scarlet sins are made white as snow (Isaiah 1:18).
David writes in Psalm 51:
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
Maybe in the same way that I had to reach for my sunglasses to shade my eyes from the glare of the snow, David found himself blinded by the brightness of God’s grace following his confession of his sin with Bathsheba.
Reflecting on Psalm 51, the great British preacher Charles Spurgeon said:
“When God washes the believer, he makes him whiter than snow, for the snow soon becomes tainted, soon loses its purity; but we never shall if God shall wash us.”
The snow is already starting to melt and the dirty slush is beginning to take its place all over town. Most of us will be running our cars through the car wash in the next week or two to remove the grime and grit that has splashed up and has stuck to our vehicles.
But God’s grace does not melt or fade. It covers our mess and our scars with a blanket of pure radiance and makes even the most hard-hearted sinner into a new creation.
“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.”
The next time you see a snow-covered landscape, take a minute to thank God for His great grace that covers all your sin.
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