“WITHOUT SPOT OR WRINKLE OR ANY SUCH THING.”
By A. S. Ervant
As I PASSED through a laundry recently, I watched the worker looking over a pile of clothes that had already passed through a washing. The greater part of them was clean, but on some of them were stains which the washing that had cleansed the others had failed to take out. To these stains the worker applied a fluid which removed them, leaving the garment clean and white. As I passed by the mangle, I noticed how careful the worker was to smooth out the wrinkles before the clothes passed between the heated rollers of the wrangle; for if they were not smoothed out before, the pressure of the heated rollers served to make them only deeper and more distinct.5 And then I thought of my life, and I prayed that the gracious Lord would apply the cleansing blood to the deep-set stains of my character, and make them white, lest the cleansing I have already received serve only to make them the more prominent. And as the worker smoothed out the wrinkles in the clothes, so I prayed my God to let His own gentle hand smooth out the wrinkles sin had made before He permitted me to pass through the heat and pressure of affliction and sorrow, lest the trial designed to smooth them out, should press them only the deeper, and make them the more permanent. So does God desire His people to be made “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.”