That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

When we moved into our house 6 years ago, the builder left various cans of paint out in the garage for the purpose of us being able to touch up our walls, doors, etc. No matter where we’ve lived, we’ve always been sticklers for every several months walking through the house and touching up scuffmarks on walls. We learned early on that if you keep this up on a regular basis, then you can prolong having to paint your house and you aren’t overwhelmed one day if you do decide to touch up.

So after a few months, I grabbed our primary wall paint color along with a sponge brush and, thank the Lord, I only did our laundry room first. Within a couple of hours after the paint dried, there was an obvious problem. The paint that was left behind in our garage was not the exact color of our walls. It was darker. So, as a result, you saw every place I touched up. In fact, it looked worse than the original scuffs because it stuck out so much.

We tried stirring it up more, making sure it was thoroughly mixed. Didn’t work. We went to the paint store and bought that same color, brought it home, and … same issue. The paint dried darker. Trying to dilute it or fix it to match only made things worse. So we were finally left without options. No choice but to abandon our maintenance plan and let the scuffs accumulate. Until finally, one day, we’ll just have to re-paint the walls.

Isn’t it interesting how so often in our lives when we “get a scuff,” we mess up, we blow it, we know something isn’t right, we try and figure out a way to touch it up on our own? To smooth over the situation somehow? But our touch-ups are never going to match, never going to blend in, just won’t cut it for getting our house right again. No, the only answer, regardless of the size of the sin, is to ask Jesus to paint the wall with a fresh coat again. Admit we are responsible for the mark and ask Him to help us because He and He alone can cover our sin. Whatever we do on our own to try and fix it just makes things worse. The quicker we learn to engage and enact 1 John 1:9 anytime we mess up, the better our lives will be.

And what’s so interesting is Jesus always applies the color of blood red but we always come out white as snow.

“Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.” —Romans 4:7-8 NIV