Crime Scene Investigation

If CSI should pay a visit to our shop, they might think they were looking for several murder victims. There are red splatters and splashes everywhere, as well as a multitude of rags drenched blood-red. There are even blood red footprints. The makeshift table must have been where the deed was done, because blood-red stains are all over it.

But, acutally, this is the continuing saga of the antique cabinet. All of the old stain and varnish has been removed. And THEN. THEN I started on the red paint that covered the inside of the top of my antique cabinet. One coat of stripper. Red begins running everywhere!!! As I began to scrape away at it, globs fell on to the floor. I must be careful or it runs onto the newly stripped parts. And even though I am extrememly careful, it runs over edges, behind the shelves, down onto the other stripped surfaces. Another coat of stripper. The rags are now so red, I am wiping more red on than off!! A third coat of stripper. The paint is finally gone--but the wood is stained. I don't know how far I would have to sand it to completely get rid of the red.

The color is growing on me.
I think I'll leave it!
I rather like it.

As I was fighting the battle of the red paint, I thought how sin is like the red paint. James talks about the progressive nature of sin--and boy was this progressive!! Just a little stripper, and the paint ran everywhere. And like sin, the red paint affected everything near it. The other parts of the wood, the rags, the table, the floor, my clothes, my shoes, the tools--EVERYTHING. Sin is just like that. We think that sin only touches that one area of our lives--but in reality it not only touches every area of our lives--but the lives of everyone close to us!

And try as I might, I could not completely get rid of the red. I can't get rid of sin either. Oh, I can try. I can scrub it. I can try to cover it. I can try to get it out of my life. But all my feeble attempts only make it run further and spread faster. Only God can clean it. And even though I am STAINED with sin--it is HIS blood that makes me clean. And not just surface clean--it washes me WHITER THAN SNOW!! How can something so red, make me so white???

"Amazing Love, how can it be, that you, my King, would die for me?"

"There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.

Dear dying lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more.

E'er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be still I die.
And shall be till I die."