“I’ll take this box of scarlet,” Peggy said. “It’s such a deep red. I hope it can dye a gray blouse red,” she commented as she handed the box of dye and her money to the old man behind the counter.
The old man smiled as he answered, “I’m quite sure it will. It’s much easier to dye things scarlet than to get rid of a scarlet stain. Twenty years ago I discovered a scarlet stain on my heart. At first I was scared that nothing would take it out...”
Peggy stared at the old man, and then all at once she understood what he was talking about... and she got a little annoyed. “More talk about religion. Can’t I ever get away from it?” she thought. “At home mother talks about it, and here Aunt Barbara keeps bringing up the subject too... and now this old man in this dinky little store!”
As he handed her the bag and her change, Peggy muttered a quick “thank-you” and got out of the store as fast as she could.
On the way home Peggy thought about the blouse she was going to dye. She had worn it a lot, but at work she had gotten some spots on it she couldn’t get out. She needed a red blouse, and so this would solve two problems at the same time.
Aunt Barbara lived alone and was glad when Peggy could take a few days off to come visit her. Aunt Barbara made Peggy feel welcome anytime by having the upstairs bedroom always ready for her.
Because Aunt Barbara’s house was always so clean and nothing was ever out of place, Peggy guessed that Saturday afternoon would be a good time for her to dye the blouse, when Aunt Barbara was usually out shopping.
Saturday was cloudy and rainy, so Peggy was just as glad to stay inside and work on her blouse project. She decided to dye it in the upstairs bathroom sink.
It took quite a while to get the blouse dyed, because it had to sit in the hot dye water for a long time. At last it was done. But she would not know how it turned out until it dried. Peggy hung the blouse on a hanger over the bathtub to let it drip dry, and then she scrubbed out the pink color left in the sink. She hoped Aunt Barbara wouldn’t need to come upstairs the rest of the day. (Aunt Barbara didn’t use the upstairs rooms except when she had company.)
The next morning Peggy hurried into the bathroom wondering how the blouse had turned out. When she saw the blouse she knew she had made the right decision in dying it red. It looked like a new blouse!
Then she looked down into the bathtub and saw bright red splotches. The blouse had dripped scarlet dye onto the white bathtub. “Oh, no!” exclaimed Peggy out loud to herself. “Aunt Barbara is so fussy about her house... how will I ever clean up this mess?”
It wasn’t until after breakfast that Peggy had a chance to slip upstairs with some cleanser and a rag. Twenty minutes later she was sitting on the edge of the bathtub ready to cry, because no matter how hard she scrubbed, the scarlet spots were still there. She had only managed to lighten them a little. “What will Aunt Barbara say?” Peggy asked herself when she realized that she was not going to get the tub clean. She didn’t know what to do.
That evening she was going with Aunt Barbara to a special meeting. Aunt Barbara gave her no choice. Peggy went and sat beside her aunt, absorbed in her own problems. She was startled back to the present when the man speaking began his talk with, “Though your sins be as scarlet....” He pointed out that no matter how black the stain of sin might be, the blood of Jesus Christ could wash it away if the sinner would come to Him in simple faith.
Half an hour later Peggy held her head down to hide the tears that filled her eyes, bowing her head to the fact that she had found the scarlet stain on her own heart, and the only One who could make it “white as snow” was the Lord Jesus Christ. “Wash me,” Peggy said into His ear which is always open. “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”
“Good evening, young lady.” Peggy jumped. Leaving the meeting, she had stepped outside into the darkness of the rainy night. She turned and looked into the face of the old man she had bought the dye from. She wasn’t annoyed with him now. In fact, she had even forgotten about the problem the red dye was causing her.
“I—” she began, but he interrupted her.
“I saw you there in the meeting, but you didn’t see me,” he told her.
To her surprise Peggy found it easy to tell this kind old man of the decision she had just made. As they talked she suddenly remembered the stain on the bathtub. In a few moments she had told him her problem.
“I’m afraid Aunt Barbara will be upset,” she concluded. “She is so careful about her house. I just don’t know how to get rid of those red spots.”
“Well, I won’t promise anything, but I’ll see if we have something at the store that might help. Stop by tomorrow afternoon.”
The next afternoon Peggy ran into the store while doing some errands for her aunt. To her relief her friend was there with a bottle of cleaning fluid that he hoped would help.
Peggy held her breath when she finally got back upstairs to the bathtub and poured some of the fluid on the red spots. As she wiped the tub the stain came off and the tub looked as clean as it had before!
The next afternoon she stopped in the store again before she left for home. “I don’t know how to thank you,” Peggy exclaimed to her friend.
The old man only smiled kindly at her. “Maybe there was a purpose in it, my friend,” he said. “God often makes use of simple things while working with our hearts.”
ML-07/07/1985