"White Wool, White Snow"

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Today is the verse about your sins as red as crimson becoming as white as snow in God's forgiveness.

And I can't help thinking that here may be something to think about when I'm all bothered about "purity" and living up to "Katherine" meaning "pure."  Because it's quite natural for people in Biblical times to think of "white" as the absence of color and sin.  The absence of anything marring the white, before anything happened to it or was done with it.

But white's not like that.  White isn't nothing -- new and bright and clean.  White is all the colors.  White is everyone and everything working in tandem -- not the scarlet colors going off by themselves to decide that they are more important and noteworthy and trying to kick all the others colors out so that they can be the ones to shine.

And less politically, more individually, this is how forgiveness works.  It's not magic taking away the red that was spilled on the white.  It's God showing you how to re-integrate all of your other colors so that you are once again a sum of the whole, you are once again part of the Body of Christ -- all the colors coming together to form white.

Or even more individually, perhaps just all the parts of you coming back into alignment to work together to be your best self, through God.  Grace maintaining the balance so that your red never shines through and wrecks violence through anger or green gets uppity and throws a jealous fit or blue gets so sad that you stop seeing other people's pain for obsession with your own.

You are in balance with yourself and with everyone around you -- then you are white.  It's a process, it's work to get to white.  And yes, to keep everything white once you're there, but it's not a free gift to arrive in the world white and have to protect it from stain forever and forever.  It's work to become all of the colors in alignment and work to maintain it once you're there.

That's so much more worthwhile -- and encouraging.

It's also something that we can't do without God.  And it's beautiful.