A few months ago Anthony and I went shopping for suits for him to wear to our wedding. We picked out a white shirt and as we went to check out, he noticed a tiny stain on it. Ever the bargain hunter, he asked if he could just buy the shirt for a discounted price. The stain was small and only he and I would have ever even seen it. The ladies at the counter took it to the back to try and clean it, and when they failed they brought us a new one, unstained.
At the time it seemed like a bit of a let down, we were happy to save money where we could, but the more I thought about it, the more beautiful it became. The shirt we bought that day is the shirt he’ll wear on our wedding day, the shirt he’ll be wearing when I walk down the aisle in white. Silly as it may seem, I’m so grateful that the store didn’t just give us a discount and call it good, because God wouldn’t have had it that way.
God doesn’t just take a discount on us and call it good. God does what He can to clean our ‘shirts’, a.k.a. our souls, and if He can’t get the spot out, He gives us a new, clean garment. Through the sacraments of baptism and reconciliation we are cleaned and made spotless as we stand before Him. God doesn’t see the value in the discounted souls. Jesus didn’t take one less whipping, one less nail in His hands or feet, He already paid the price in full. The beauty and the love of God is that He desires to clean us, to give us what we need to be pure, spotless, blameless and holy before Him.
We would have been happy with the slightly stained shirt and the discounted price at the store that day. God, as He usually does, had something more profound in mind. He wants to wash away our every stain, our every sin, so that when we walk into the church on our wedding day, not only will our garments be free from stain, our souls will be too.
