December 15, 2020
Today’s Hope
Written by Guest Writer, Joy Mathis Chadwick
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Psalm 51:7 KJV
Looking out our window on this cold, cold December morning, it looks like a picture-perfect Christmas card. We got just enough snow yesterday and last night to transform everything with a blanket of beauty. The sun is just now coming up and the “treetops glisten” (just like the song says), drawing even more attention to the beauty around us. The weather alone is enough to put even the “scroogiest” in the Christmas spirit!
God has promised that we, too, can be even whiter than the beautiful winter’s snow, but that cleansing can come only from Him. We can’t come to Him while there is the ugliness of sin between us; the only way to rid ourselves from that ugliness is to lay it at God’s feet and ask his forgiveness. But the ugliness of sin is not just superficial like the snowfall that covers the winter’s dead grass; it also requires that God purge us from the inside, deep within the dark corners of our heart where we think we have hidden those sins that we might want to hang on to for just a little while longer. We all have our “pet sins”, don’t we? And those “pet sins” may seem as innocent as spending time on Facebook while we neglect God’s Word. But the “little sins” hurt God just as much as the “big sins”.
When King David asked God to purge him with hyssop, he knew that he needed to be cleaned from the inside out, and not just cleansed, but healed also. Just the word “purge” translates to expelling something completely; but the Psalmist went on to clarify that the purge should involve hyssop; hyssop is a plant whose leaves are often used in herbal medicine. David’s life was a portrait of adultry and murder, yet God still called him “a man after his own heart” – not because God condoned or disregarded David’s sins, but because David had found God’s forgiveness for those sins. That same forgiveness is available to each of us today.
The sunshine will soon likely melt away the snow we got last night, leaving the reality of the dead of winter. For any areas of our lives that we have covered with a blanket of snow to hide away any ugliness, let the SONshine melt that away to reveal what God has seen already. Let Him cleanse us from the inside out.
What better gift could we give at Christmas than to give our hearts to Jesus Christ!
