It was a clear cold day, not much snow but plenty of ice, just right for skating. Kathleen and her friends were on their way home, carrying their skates.
“Hello,” called a voice behind them. They turned at once and-waited for Mary, a bigger girl who was hurrying to meet them.
All the little girls talked at once, telling of the fun they had had, and the bumps and bruises too, and showing their skates. Mary listened and smiled, but she was looking very specially at Kathleen’s skates. They were different. They had been black, that was plain enough, but Kathleen had painted them white, and the result was a funny mixture of grayness, nut pretty at all.
“Kathleen,” said Mary at last, “you know what your skates make me think of?”
“No what?”
“They used to be black, black all over, just like a heart that is black with sin. You wanted them to be white, but no matter how much you wanted it, you couldn’t take the black off. It was just like sin in the heart—you can’t get it off.
“So you tried to cover it up. You used good white paint I suppose, but it didn’t work. The black shows through. You can’t cover up that black, and you can’t really cover sins either, not from the eye of God. White boots have to be white all through, with no black underneath. And there is only one thing that can make a black heart White all through, with no sins, not one in the sight of God.”
Kathleen looked away, but little Dianne was listening eagerly. “I know,” she said, “I know what that one thing is. It’s the blood of Jesus.”x
“Right Dianne!” Kathleen could have answered just as readily, for she knew the way of salvation well, but she had never trusted that precious blood to wash away her sins, and she did not love to talk of it among her friends.
Do you know that the precious blood of Jesus can wash away your sins? Better still, do you know that the precious blood of Jesus has washed away your sins? Don’t he a poor “whitewashed” sinner whose heart is still black before God. You may now be a child of God, washed white in the blood of the Lamb, if you will come to the Lord. Jesus just as you are, and accept Him as your Saviour.
ML 12/30/1951