White As Snow

I know right now I am in the middle of the Fruits of the Spirit, however, with recent conversations I finally grasped the concept of white as snow. It might seem weird to some that I didn't fully understand because how could you get a better description than white as snow? You can't, but you can not fully understand just how white snow actually is until you have seen it first hand. I have seen snow before, I grew up in Idaho, but I had never seen snow like this.

Recently Ethan and I took a trip to Alaska to visit family. We had a great time and took many excursions on our trip but the most memorable adventure was a glacier landing on Mount. McKinley.

Now we had an amazing time but as you can see in this photo, we are surrounded by snow. Beautiful, untouched, perfectly clean snow. I had never before seen something so perfect in my life. This wasn't the kind of snow that sits in your driveway and slowly accumulates dirt until it melts in spring. It was breathtaking and is still difficult to describe how vast the snow extends in these mountains and how the mountains are so tall; yet we were seeing them exactly as God intended. Untouched by man or animal; in the state that they were created. This is where I understood why God said He would make us as white as snow. 

    Isaiah 1:18 

      '"Come now, and let us reason together," Says the Lord, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool."'

The guides for our mountain tour wouldn't let us go up without sunglasses, and we thought it was because it was a nice, warm sunny day and it would be a little bright with the snow. We were wrong; completely wrong. It is not just bright; it is blinding! I took my glasses off for a brief moment to see how bright it would be and my eyes had an instant headache. It was too white to look at with my bare eyes. It was as if my eyes were seeing a color that they couldn't comprehend. I had never seen something so amazing in my life. I don't know if there ever will be such an eye-opening look at the perfect picture God gave us to demonstrate how perfectly clean we, as believers, appear to Him. 

 These are just a couple photos to show the crystal clear brilliance of the snow. The first photo is edited to take out the glare, but the second is the raw picture of just how bright it was.

Psalm 51:7

  "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow"

Another image that has really resonated with me throughout my life is a story that my mother told me when I was a teenager. She told me about a time she went hunting with a friend and he was extremely dirty. After he had made his kill he was using the blood to clean his arms from the dirt and grime. At first it sounded so gross, (I am not against hunting in any way it is something I was raised on, however I don't know of anyone who openly enjoys being covered to their elbows in blood) but then she explained how she understood what a beautiful thing that God did by using Jesus' blood to cleanse us from our sins. That after her friend had washed the blood off with snow, ironic, he was perfectly clean. Perfectly Clean.

   Acts 3:19
     "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord."

God gave us images in this world so that we could understand what He has done in the spiritual. He has used blood, something that stains and is difficult to clean, to be the cleanser for our souls. By so doing He has made us blindingly white as snow.