This morning I am looking outside at the freshly fallen snow. The ground is covered with a blanket of white. It looks so new, so clean, so pure. It makes it easy to forget that underneath is crusty, dirty snow and ice. Hidden beneath are all things that brown and rotting. Then I read the passages from the Bible for today...
27After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, 28and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
I am challenged to ask myself, What is the state of my inner soul? Am I spiritually healthy? Not so much, what does my life look like to others, but how am I doing in my relationship with God? Is there the cover-up of "white snow" on the outside, yet inside it is filthy? Is there only the appearance of being white as snow or have I deeply experienced Isaiah 1:18?
"Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
- Isaiah 58:9-10
27After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, 28and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
29Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
31Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
- Luke 5:27-32
I am challenged to ask myself, What is the state of my inner soul? Am I spiritually healthy? Not so much, what does my life look like to others, but how am I doing in my relationship with God? Is there the cover-up of "white snow" on the outside, yet inside it is filthy? Is there only the appearance of being white as snow or have I deeply experienced Isaiah 1:18?
"Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.
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