While this may have happened last year as well… a huge snowstorm in April is still unconventional. Granted, it definitely made me think about the song lyrics that say,

Jesus paid it all;
all to Him I owe.
Sin had left a crimson stain;
He washed me pure as snow.

I started wondering, is this just a really fun word picture, or did the lyricists get it from the Bible? Enter everyone’s favorite superhero: Google Search!

Looks like Isaiah 1:18 may be our winner! Check it out here in its original context:

¹⁶ Wash and make yourselves clean.
    Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
    stop doing wrong.
¹⁷ Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.

¹⁸ “Come now, let us settle the matter,”
    says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
    they shall be like wool.
¹⁹ If you are willing and obedient,
    you will eat the good things of the land;
²⁰ but if you resist and rebel,
    you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

In this passage Isaiah is calling out his fellow Israelites because they we not fulfilling their destiny as the children of Abraham. God called Abraham’s children to fulfill the promise God first made to him at the very beginning of Abraham’s journey with God in Genesis 12:2-3:

² “I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
³ I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.”

All of the peoples of the earth should have been being blessed by the Israelites, including the fatherless and the widows among them. But, alas, no such luck. Israel had sinned by not becoming the people God had called them to be. And in their ledger their sin had left marks of scarlet and red crimson.

But God promised Israel that there would be a time when all the red would be removed, all the stain from the sins would be white, like snow…

It is simply the genius of God that the thing that He would use to both fulfill all of Israel’s failures and bless all of the nations of the world was the deep crimson red blood of Jesus. Ephesians 1:7 says,

⁷ In him [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace

And Ephesians 2:13 says,

¹³ But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Through the blood of Jesus, the sins, which marked Israel’s ledger red, have been forgiven. By the blood of Christ the blessing of being a part of God’s family have been brought near to to everyone!

While the white snow may be a bit overwhelming, especially since it has fallen so late in the year, it also reminds me of the scarlet-crimson-red stain that sin left on the ledger of all of humanity; it also reminds me of the scarlet-crimson-red blood of Jesus which simultaneously brings everyone who is willing to submit to God into His family and washes away the stain, so that even our sins are as white as snow.