Stay Found.

Lately, I’ve been admiring the posts on my fellow breeders’ Facebook pages featuring their newborn Valais Blacknose lambs covered in bright, snow-white curls. It’s been awhile since we’ve had any babies on the farm, though we hope to have a flock of American Purebred lambs (F5s) born next May. I miss seeing pure white bundles of joy pronking in the pasture. For now, our eight mommas and ewe lambs are lolly-gagging about in their "dishwater brown” wool — no sense stressing them with baths at this point. They’ll be shorn again soon enough. Of course, they couldn’t care less about the color of their wool. I’m the only one who cringes at the dingy sight. 

That got me thinking about what we, as the flock of the Lord, must look like to God as we freely wander this good, green earth, weathering every thorny condition and evil known to humankind: sin, stress, moral decay, political and cultural divides, to name a few. I’m fairly certain that unless we’re fresh from the baptismal font or confessional, we’re all a bit dingy in our own way — even if only by means of exposure, much like toxic, second-hand smoke. Well, maybe “dingy" is sugar-coating it, because God himself gives human sin a color . . .

Not black, as one might expect. Not a grotesque brown, like vomit or dirt. But scarlet and crimson red.  Time and again, He expressly chooses a color we associate with blood.

“Come now, let us reason together,

says the Lord:

though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be as white as snow;

though they are red like crimson,

they shall become like wool."

Isaiah 1:18

We know that sin wounds. Not just ourselves, but those around us who are exposed to it – and even the whole world with its ripple effects. We “see” this crimson color in acts of murder and other grievous deeds opposed to life. It’s the color we associate with anger: hot cheeks, crying eyes, boiling blood, and inflamed tongues; and the color we associate with disordered passions that ruin lives, relationships, and even destroy peaceful societies. 

But the Lord gives redemption a color too – not just any white, but a white as clean as freshly fallen snow. Why snow? Perhaps because it comes down from heaven, the source of all grace and healing. 

If you’re feeling, like me, a little “dishwater brown” these days — take heart and “stay found." We belong to a Good Shepherd who never cringes at the sight of us but sees a flock of beautiful souls washed in his blood and made as fresh and clean as the wool of newborn lambs. The world is very much with us. But so is our God and Savior, Jesus, who by his sacrificial love makes all things bright and new.