Life is full of mundane tasks. One of those tasks is laundry. I have a tendency to avoid my laundry until the dirty laundry pile is so big that I can’t see the rest of my room. To motivate myself to do my laundry more regularly, I decided I would pick one day in the week when I would do it all at once. For the summer, I have officially declared Tuesdays as laundry day. Every Tuesday, as I am sorting through my laundry pile, I come across one of my favorite shirts- a periwinkle blue, short-sleeved sweater. Right as I am about to put the sweater in the washer each week, I see a new spot or stain that has appeared on it. This week it was peanut butter. Last week it was mustard. The week before it was Starbucks iced latte. When I see the stain, I generously squirt it with stain remover and throw it in the wash, only half-heartedly believing that the stain will come out. After the load is finished, I pull the sweater out, grimacing and expecting every time to see a remnant of the stain. Every week, though, to my surprise, the sweater comes out stain free. No matter what I spill on the sweater, the blot somehow disappears in the wash.
Doing my laundry today, I sighed with relief when I discovered that this week’s peanut butter stain had come out of my periwinkle blue sweater. When I saw that my sweater was once again stain free, I was reminded of God. I don’t know about you, but I mess-up in life. I say hurtful things, think judgmental thoughts, do plain stupid stuff. Those things are like the iced lattes, mustard, and peanut butter that I keep spilling on my sweater. Each time I mess-up, though, I am miraculously forgiven. Just as the stain remover amazingly washes away stains on my sweater, the stains of my mistakes are washed away by of the blood of Jesus. Little shadows or remnants of the stains don’t remain. I am washed of my sins until I am as white as snow.
I am frequently in awe that God would love me despite my tendency to mess-up. I ask Him, like David did in Psalm 8:4, “Why do you bother with me? Why take a second look my way?” If you read the next verse, though, it amazingly says, “You have made him (man) but a little lower than God, and You have crowned him with glory and honor.”
If we come to God when we sin and sincerely ask for forgiveness, He washes us clean. We can start every day out with a clean sweater! We can’t worry about peanut butter stains sticking around when we fully realize that God forgives day after day. No matter how deep and dark the stains of our mistakes may be, when we ask His forgiveness, He washes us thoroughly.