Powder
in Thoughtful Thursdays on June 18, 2015
What do you know about powder? I realize that is a relatively odd question. I actually started thinking about this yesterday. There are several different types of powder. There is the powder you put on your face, the sweet smelling kind you sprinkle on a baby’s bum, and then there is the powder I want to talk to you about today. Yesterday I was up at my church’s office for a meeting, and while I was waiting for that meeting to begin, a friend of mine popped into the office exclaiming how excited she was about the renovations being done to our church’s Food Pantry. She oversees the Food Pantry, and it is being expanded. This is a terrific blessing, not only for the people of our community, but also for the people who have the opportunity to volunteer in that Pantry. She paused for a moment and said, “It’s funny, I don’t even mind the dust from this project! Unlike the renovations being done to my bathroom at home!” That made me giggle. It reminded me of the time when I came home from work to a great big mess in my own house…
My husband had decided to have both of the upstairs bathrooms gutted…at the same time. The upside to having them worked on at the same time is that once they were finished–they would be finished all at once. The downside was that the mess was absolutely horrific. The tile from those bathrooms had to be beaten apart, scraped and basically pulverized in order to remove it from the floor. Apparently when you lay Mexican Ceramic Tile, you are never supposed to change it out. The kicker with this little scenario is the simple fact that I was unaware of the time frame that this was taking place.
Oh, we had talked about doing this…but the actual day and time had yet to be announced. Therefore when I came home from work on that Friday afternoon, I was greeted with a layer of powder-fine dust over everything in my house. Since I did not know the renovation process was beginning on that day, I had not moved anything from the rooms directly adjoining to these two bathrooms. So everything in those rooms were completely covered with about an inch-thick layer of this very impressively clingy dust. It was on the floor, of course…It was on the linens in the closets that were INSIDE the bathrooms (BTW, the closet doors had been REMOVED thus making it so much easier for the dust to travel to the towels, wash cloths, SHEETS, pillow cases, etc). The dust was on ten years’ worth of Creative Memories Scrapbooks. I will pause right there for a collective gasp from my avid scrapbook readers. Nothing was safe. It absolutely permeated everything. This pervasive nuisance made me think of something else…
If we take a good, hard look at ourselves, we would notice that we, too have a “dust” problem. I am not suggesting that y’all (or me—I did bathe today) are hygiene deficient. What I am saying is that we all have a sin problem. And this sin covers each one of us so thoroughly and so completely that it permeates every part of our lives, just like that dust covered my house. Our sin blankets the outer layer of our person and then it creeps into the very core of our being. Shall we see what the Book has to say about this?
Psalm 51:5 says: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (NIV).
Ouch. Now, I remember when my babies were born. It was hard to look at those sweet angels and think of them as being sinful; but they were. If we keep moving to the right, we will land in the book of Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 17:9 tells us from the New King James Version, “‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind…'”
Are you beginning to see a pattern? We have a sin problem that is covering us from the inside out. This sin, it is in every part of us. It is even in places we cannot see. I have one more place I want to show you. We are going to jump all the way to very back of the New Testament, this is from The Voice translation.
1 John 1:8 “If we go around bragging, ‘We have no sin,’ then we are fooling ourselves and are strangers to the truth.”
Wow. Strangers to the truth…No one is immune to this. We cannot escape it. It does not matter how well we drape ourselves. We can try and use colorful and expensive tarps created by Ralph Lauren or Valentino or fresh off the rack from Target or Wal-Mart. It does not matter! We will always and forever be covered in a fine layer of sin.
What can we do?
I have an answer. You see, when Jeff finally finished with his little remodeling project, and the dust finally settled–I could not effectively rid my house of the dust. There was simply too much of it. I needed help. It is the same with us. The sin that is on me and in me is simply too much. I cannot rid myself of the sin–I never could. You cannot either. We need help. We need a Savior. Jesus came to help us. He came to save us. Without Him, we would be lost forever. There is not one place your sins can hide from Him. Though they may try and hide in the crevices and corners of the closets of our hearts—powder-fine dust is like that; however, Jesus is more effective that Swiffer, Mr. Clean and Merry Maids–combined! It is over. “It is finished” John 19:30 (The Voice). So, how is the powder that covers you? Walk with me this week, let Jesus dust you off. You will enjoy the fresh new robes. Have a blessed week!
“‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool'” Isaiah 1:18 (NIV).
Here’s hoping the rest of your week is POWDER fresh!
-Dallas
One thought on “Powder”
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Lynn Doyer says:
Such a powerful message! (And a funny story). I appreciate you using the different versions of the Bible, I use many myself, they have much to offer.