Whiter than snow. Yeah, right. Have you noticed? This time of year, the snow isn’t very white, is it? Warm weather, snow melting… It was almost 40 yesterday and 40-45 is the forecast for today. The snow banks have never looked so ugly, so grimy and dingy... and yet vulnerable, precarious... their days are numbered. You almost have to feel sorry for those once stately banks and piles of snow....
Those dirty banks of snow along the street are NOT what the psalmist and Isaiah are talking about (Ps 51; Isa. 1:10-20), of course, but the grungy old snow can remind us of what we mean when we pray, "Lord, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow."
How did the snow get to be so ugly?
It looked beautiful after the last snow fall, didn’t it? But yet, accumulating through the winter, the evidence of salt and sand spread on the streets and then shoved to the sides after the next snowfall, the evidence of other sources of grime. And the melting reveals what was there all the time. And so it is with us.
How good is it that God doesn’t just spread a new layer of snow over us?! God, by grace, washes us so that we’re just as clean as a foot of freshly fallen snow in the middle of your backyard or in the depths of the woods.
This brilliant newness is what our hearts deeply long for.
Our deepest desire is
for Christ-in-us,
for Christ’s washing,
for Christ’s snow-white purity.
What we seek, only God can give.
What we ask for, we are unable to find for ourselves.
What we desire is faith, but faith is pure gift.
What we pray for is for the grace
to be faithful receivers of God’s gifts --
which means being faithful givers of love and mercy --
and faithful servants of the Prince of Shalom.
Part 4 in a six-part series based on the Collect for Purity.
Inspired by six prayers by Walter Brueggemann in Prayers for a Privileged People.
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