“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. – Isaiah 1:18

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. – Psalm 51:7b

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” – John 1:29

To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,…to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. – Revelation 1:5-6

The snow outside has me all distracted. Although Spring is officially here, a day-long snowfall has turned everything white again. Our daffodils have bounced back from an earlier snowfall, a wind storm, and rain over the last couple of weeks. The weight of this snow and the freezing cold may, this time, close out this early season of blooming.

What else came to mind this morning is an old hymn I learned as a child. Whiter Than Snow. We would sometimes sing it at church, after the sermon and during the “invitation”. That call to the altar for those gathered to worship. The lyrics dealt with our sinful hearts and serious need for a Savior. Also within the message of the song was God’s promise and power to take our sins away, through Christ’s sinless life and death on the cross.

As the Scriptures say, He can indeed make us “whiter than snow”…or as white “as wool”.Photo Credit: Max Pixel

We don’t talk about sin as much today. Even when we did, in my childhood, it was easy for us to get caught up in legalism, looking for latitude in our service in church…rather than wrestling with the condition of our hearts before God.

That old hymn by James L. Nicholson served me well in the waywardness of my youth. The first-person lyric actually gives the image of someone who knows the experience of being cleansed by God, through Christ, and then falling back into sin. There is an earnest longing to be “perfectly whole”. Some would find the theology lacking in this song, because what Jesus did for us, in cleansing us from “all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9) was completed on the Cross. The presence and power of sin will be something we wrestle until Heaven, but He has made us clean by His blood.

That demands a sacred pause…and this snow day has given it to me.

The version I know of Whiter Than Snow, from my childhood, is here. Updated versions of this  can be found here and here.

It may be just too old to engage some of you, but a bit of the lyric follows:.

I’d like to close out today with part of a poem by John Whittaker Watson. It is entitled Beautiful Snow. At some point, after it was published, a last stanza was added. I don’t know how you will read it, but I read it as a prodigal might…one separated from God…who was received home again…washed white as the beautiful snow:

Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell,

Fell like the snow flakes from Heaven to Hell;

Fell to be trampled as filth in the street,

Fell to be scoffed, to be spit on and beat;

Pleading — Cursing — Dreading to die,

Selling my soul to whoever would buy;

Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread,

Hating the living and fearing the dead,

Merciful God! have I fallen so low!

And yet I was once like the beautiful snow.

How strange it should be that this beautiful snow

Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!

How strange it should be when the night comes again

If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain!

Fainting — Freezing — Dying — alone,

Too wicked for prayer, too weak for a moan

To be heard in the streets of the crazy town,

Gone mad in the joy of snow coming down;

To be and to die in my terrible woe,

With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow.

[Following lines added by an unknown author]

Helpless and foul as the trampled snow,

Sinner, despair not! Christ stoopeth low

To rescue the soul that is lost in sin,

And raise it to life and enjoyment again.

Groaning — Bleeding — Dying — for thee,

The Crucified One hung on the cursed tree!

His accents of mercy fall soft on thine ear,

“Is there mercy for me? Will He heed my weak prayer?”

Oh God! in the stream that for sinners did flow

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

The End***

Photo Credit: Tobias Van Der Elst, Flickr

*Lyrics to James L. Nicholson’s Hymn Whiter Than Snow

**Lyrics to At the Cross – Chris Tomlin

***Christ Washes Us Whiter Than Snow – Pastor Mike Storti

P.S. …and they’re pushing back up one more time. Glory!