My Curry Stained Shirt

Winters are awesome for formal wear. I love the suits and coats that you can wear without feeling like parts of you were melting away in secret. Unfortunately though winter is ebbing away in Delhi and summer has already shown the tips of its heated tentacles. I decided I was going to get a few more suited days in before it became just plain silly. So, this Saturday I pulled out a nice coat and white shirt and went for service. Now if you know me you know that white shirts and me are not the best of friends - especially when it comes to meal times. Saturdays lunch seemed all too familiar and predictable in its unfolding of events. I was eating chicken curry and rice and sure enough towards the last bit of my meal I dropped my guard for that one regrettable moment and a blob of curry made its way to my lovely shirt. I dabbed it away as much as I could. I managed to make it smaller (miraculously) but it was not going to hide itself. I resigned myself to thinking “It’s so small no-one’s going to notice it especially if I cleverly hide it behind the collar flaps of my jacket.” But whatever I did and whatever I thought, my white shirt was no more just a white shirt it was a stained white shirt.

As I made my way through the day getting closer and closer to the worship stage of the evening I found myself thinking “Isn’t this what real life is like?” God gives us His standards of purity – the white shirt if I may. We drop a blob of our sinfulness on it and we try frantically and meticulously to dab it away eventually resign ourselves to the consolation that if we could just hide it well enough no one would really notice. But however small the dab of curry and however well hidden… the white shirt is no more white. It’s a stained white shirt. Praise Jesus who washes us to white as snow leaving no trace or stain or blemish.

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