TOD 11.13.07

When I was at church Sunday listening to a very engaging sermon, I happened to look down at my shirt and discover I had dribbled a little bit of coffee on it. Had it been a pattern or some color, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But, of course, it was white, now with a little unwanted dollop of brown. Recognizing that the sermon was more important than some silly shirt-stain, I decided to ignore it. But I couldn’t. It kept bothering and distracting me.

I wanted to go clean it off, and I was worried that one of my favorite shirts would be ruined. So I sat there, trying to pay attention but only succeeding somewhat. And as I tried, I kept thinking how stupid this was. It’s just a shirt. It’s just a little stain. And I’m letting this distract me from a great sermon? How neurotic is this! That’s when it hit me. I wasn’t being a silly little human, I was being very much like God.

When He looks at us, we might be all white with just one little stain, and that one little stain becomes completely distracting because of His Holiness. And just like dried coffee stains on a white shirt cannot be removed completely, no amount of self-scrubbing and better behavior will ever do enough to clean us in His eyes. We need a different kind of cleanser altogether.