A fresh coat of paint

This past weekend, my wife and I had a wonderful experience. We had received some money and gift cards for Christmas, and the sole intention for that money was to spruce up our home. We thought about what all we wanted to do -- new floors, new countertops, crown molding-- but we settled on starting out with the simplest thing to do: NEW PAINT!

My old roommate from college, Kevin, is now a painter. He works with a guy and paints houses for a living. He had promised us when we got married that whenever we bought a home, he would come and help us paint. I never thought much about how his paint job would be better than what we could do on our own. I just thought he'd be quicker, and not have to tape everything up to paint.

On Sunday morning, when everything had dried, and after four coats of paint on our living room walls, two coats on our kitchen, and white oil based paint on all the trim, my wife and I sat in amazement as to how wonderful it looked. The old walls were dingy, dirty, scratched, had cracks in them, and were overall hard to look at without noticing all the mistakes of prior paint jobs.

This paint job, however, was wonderful. I couldn't help but think there was some sort of spiritual application to all of this. I could say something like the paint covered the walls as does the blood of Jesus covers our sins, but that doesn't seem appropriate. No matter how many times we paint those walls, the dirt, the imperfections, all of it...was just covered up. Somewhere under all the paint, the puddy, the spackle...are still imperfections, covered up by imperfect people.

The blood of Christ is so much more than that. It completely takes away our imperfections. It does not just conceal the dirt and the scratches, but it takes them away. How wonderful that is! So why do we continue to go out and roll in the dirt again? Why do we start driving holes in the walls again? Why can't we let the blood of Christ decorate our lives instead of the scars of sin?

Paint covers a lot of things, but it can't cover our sin. Only the blood of our Christ can cover the sin.

-lane