Purify
me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
—Psalm
51:7
Christmas
is well in our rearview mirror by now, but I still haven’t quite curbed my
habit of belting out Christmas tunes when the urge arises.
One of my favorite
Christmas songs is Over the Rhine’s “Darlin’ (Christmas Is Coming),” and every
time I see the snow falling out the window, I can’t help but sing it. The song
starts out less chipper than you might expect for Christmas lyrics:
So it’s been a long
year
Every new day brings
one more tear
Till there’s nothing
left to cry
But there’s also a
lovely thread of redemption that runs through the song, all the more poignant
for its haunting opening:
Darlin’, the snow is falling
Falling like
forgiveness from the sky
If there was ever a
metaphor in nature for purity, it has to be snow. One moment the world is drab
and brown and lifeless, and then in an instant it’s transformed—clean, pure,
new. And unexpectedly beautiful. Everything is covered, from hulking buildings
to the tiniest twigs. And so it is with God’s forgiveness. When it falls, it
covers everything—from our biggest, most glaring sins to the less obvious ones
we try to hide.
Scripture uses the
image of snow to describe the purity and forgiveness God offers to us in Psalm
51:7: “Purify me from my sins, and I
will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.”
As much as
we desire to follow Jesus and live a life of purity as he did, we fail. We wake
up in the morning full of promises and hopes and commitments that today will be
different; today will be the day we choose the way of purity. But even before
breakfast, our minds have wandered to places we don’t want them to go, we’ve
snapped at a family member or roommate, and we’ve cut someone off in traffic.
When the
psalmist described becoming whiter than snow, he was writing about a phenomenon
that was rather rare and special in Israel. The country’s climate doesn’t have
four distinct seasons, the way we do in the middle of America. Instead, it has two
main seasons: long summers with hot, dry weather and short winter seasons
marked by cool, rainy conditions. In January and February, temperatures typically
drop to the 40s and 50s. It’s only in the higher elevations, such as in
Jerusalem, where the rain occasionally turns to snow. So when the psalmist
talked about God restoring us to purity like white snow, he knew it was something
the people in his day would have seen as a rare, beautiful occurrence.
Thankfully, for us who know Jesus, forgiveness is not a
sporadic, unpredictable phenomenon. It is something that is available to us at
all times—in fact, it’s something Jesus eagerly invites us to receive. When we
fail in our quest for purity, it’s not the end of our story. That’s the very
moment God offers us his forgiveness, purifying us so we become whiter than
snow. Author Philip Yancey says, “The
proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your
impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.”
So every time you see snowflakes
falling from the sky, remember: that’s the way God’s forgiveness works. It falls
on everything and makes us pure.
Is there some sin you are struggling with
that you think is beyond the scope of God’s forgiveness? Confess that sin to
God, and thank him that his blood makes you whiter than snow.
—Stephanie Rische
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