While volunteering at a church yard sale, I noticed a woman who had come across an article of clothing that had a spot on it. As I tried to use an alcohol-based cleaner to remove the spot, the conversation between her and two other people escalated into:
“Oh you will never wear anything with a spot on it.”
“It will just hang in your closet until another yard sale.”
To which she responded, “Yeah, I guess you’re right, I never have.”
As they were discussing this, I realized that the one straight marking had now turned into a big off-colored smudge. She looks down at it and says, “Oh, I’ll just put it back.”
As I watched her walk back to hang it on the rack, I allowed my mind to wander in many directions, as this is my way. First, I thought to myself, “How shallow can someone be? I mean, how many people would have felt like they were the luckiest person to have that piece of clothing? Just to have something so beautiful with a simple spot would have never stopped them from wearing it. They would have received it with a heart of gratitude.”
Then I thought how I had tried to clean up the spot myself. I only made the mark a bigger, discolored smudge. Though I was in truth, trying to help, yet I made a mess of things, when a little soap and water may have removed it and made it good as new. (It was a caramel colored jacket.)
Then my mind went to Matthew where Jesus was speaking of the Pharisees and scribes.
He says in Matthew 23:27: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones and full of all uncleanness.”
I was thinking how many times we look at someone, and say, “Wow, how beautiful they look!” And we assume that because of what we see, they have it all together, but inside they may be dead inside, full of death, envy, strife, and clamor and high-mindedness.
James 1:27 says: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
It’s not our clothes, not our outward appearance, that is important. Not that no one likes to be clean and dressed beautifully, but not everyone can. Not everyone can afford the best. I feel that it’s about the spots on our hearts and our souls! We get so caught up in our outward appearance that we forget about our inward parts.
In I Samuel 16:7: Samuel is sent by God to anoint the King of Israel and Samuel saw each son that Jesse presented to Him and in his mind’s eye, He thought because of this “characteristic or that one,” then he (whoever it was) should be the one, but God’s answer was, “…Look not on his countenance (his outward appearance) or the height of his stature; because I have refused him; for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”
In Jeremiah 17:10 it says: “I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”
Why are we, as men and women of God, so caught up in what others see outwardly? Should we not allow God to apply salve to the most inner parts of souls? Allowing Him to cleanse us His way and not our own.
David says in Psalm 51:7 and 10: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”
