Repainting – A Parable of Forgiveness

 Have you ever tried to match a paint color without a swatch or a nifty home depot attendant? I have, and I would like to attest that some mistakes can’t be covered up ourselves by eye-balling a paint color.  We are simply gonna need more help.

I recently put some new curtains in my house. I was proud of my skills because I put them in myself; I drilled the holes myself, hung the rod and even added ornamental hooks to the side wall. It was looking good…until I realized that now there were holes left from the old curtains in my wall to which I had no paint to match in order to cover the holes. 

So, with the help of a talented friend we went about trying to “match” the paint color by eye. We combined color after color in an attempt to get the paint to match just right. We spent ours painstakingly adding a little more red, a little more brown, a little more white to try to match the burgundy color on my wall.  It simply wasn’t working.  

In the end I sadly discovered it was necessary, with all my mess ups to repaint the whole wall an entirely new color in order to cover all of my little paint matching experiments and mistakes. 

Sometimes life is like this, the mistakes we make cannot be fixed on our own.  We simply need help. We need a Savior. His way is the only way to completely eliminate our sins. In the book of Isaiah we read “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)

Jesus Christ’s healing capacity and bright perfection makes it possible for us to not only become white and pure again, but enables us to look at our imperfect lives and “remember our sins no more.” 

There is no precise way to describe how this process actually occurs and no mortal tongue can explain the miraculous occurrence of forgiveness, but it is real and it is sure. The Savior Himself promises us that “…I will not forget thee. Behold I have engraven thee upon the palms of my hands.”

It is His hands that bare the mark of His payment for us. This payment erases all our sins and gives us back the hope of Eternal life. We don’t need to try to repaint the holes we have made in our lives, He has already painted them with His blood and His infinite sacrifice on our behalf.  So don’t give up and try to cover your sins with what may seem an easier route; repaint and create something breathtaking.  

Photo by Taelynn Christopher on Unsplash