"COVERED"

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!

On this first day of our new year, 2012, a little story is on my mind...

We raised our children on a road out in the country, about 30 miles east of Nashville, called "Tater Peeler Road", in Lebanon,TN. (I usually go ahead and tell people that Tater Peeler Road was just off of Chicken Road, where, at the corner lived a three legged dog named "Tripod", who continually chased cars, despite losing his limbs!)

Well, the drive to "town"(Lebanon) was up and down and all around many a twist and turn in the road..about 8 miles. While most of the houses were pretty nice and decent looking, with a few VERY nice ones in between, there was one which stuck out like a sore thumb. It was one of those 'rare' places where things were stacked up on sidewalk, driveway, and yard and all in between. Broken down lawnmowers, buckets, bicycles, pieces of cars, pieces of chairs, washing machines, and just about everything else you could imagine was strewn from the front door to the very back of their property. Now, I'm not even going to BEGIN to try and understand people of this mindset, but there it was to behold, EVERY time we went to or from town by that path. It was certainly nothing less than an eyesore.

But one winter's day I was driving to town, and it had just snowed a real good snow. Everything was beautiful...the hills, the trees, even the roads...were all beautiful. As I rounded the bend that faced "the eyesore", I was taken aback. I could not even find the house that had so much junk piled up in it's yard. I did not even recognize it, because it,too, was covered by the most completely beautiful blanket of snow you have ever seen. NO junk showing...NO trash showing...NO eyesore, just a beautiful shape of a roof, house and landscape covered in beautiful white snow. At that very moment I had somewhat of an epiphany. Or, at the very least, I saw a dramatic parallel between this scene, knowing what was "underneath" it all, and our lives, as Christians, and all that Jesus' precious, Holy, sinless, spotless blood has "covered" in our sin-filled lives. It was a stunning physical visual of the stunning spiritual reality that we live daily "by faith" in.

Jesus has "covered our junk" just as beautifully as He covered that junky eyesore of a house with a gorgeous blanket of snow that day on my ride to town, and I treasure the reality of what He has done for me, personally, and for all of us who believe.

"For The Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation and adorn the wretched with victory. Let the saints be joyful in the glory and beauty which God confers upon them; let them sing for joy upon their beds." Psalm 149:4,5

* * * H A P P Y N E W Y E A R ! ! !