I believe I was further initiated into domesticity/womanhood this morning.
I had to bleach blood out of my refrigerator, and it was disgusting. I mean all-encompassing gross- the look, smell, feel as some if it got on my hand. I couldn't stand it; truthfully, I wanted to vomit. And I do not usually get queasy at blood- I'm diabetic, so I see it on a regular basis. I don't freak out when people are injured (only if I watch it happen!). Why, today, did the sight of this blood sicken me so?
And God brought the blood of Jesus to mind. My mind went crazy as some dots began to connect between sacrifices, the Temple, and the Cross. They were all drenched in blood, and I never realized what that meant. The Temple was not pristine, as artists and historians and Jews and Christians and scholars like to imagine; it was where sin was atoned. The altar was covered in sin and blood because both are gross and ugly. Blood stains; it becomes sticky as it dries; it smells like death.
And what is overwhelming is that horrifying ugliness flows through my body and physically sustains me. Such life giving ugliness should be kept in my body, hidden away, where its effect (my life) and not its disgusting nature is seen.
Then I see the Cross. Jesus the man needed His blood inside to sustain Him.
But He knew it needed to be exposed to cleanse me.
So the ugliness of the Cross is revealed. Blood was everywhere. From the wounds covering Jesus' body, dripping upon the ground to the stream of blood that undoubtedly led to where He was tortured. The Cross was no clean place. It probably smelled bad and became messy and sticky as the lifeblood of the Son of Man dried on and around it, staining all it touched.
The ugliness of my sin is conveyed in the ugliness of that blood, and it nauseates me. Yet God calls me to do the morbidly unthinkable: bathe in this blood, revel in it, let it dry on me, stain me, for by it I am cleansed. What I desire to keep hidden Jesus exposed for all to see and live. So smell it, cry in it, lie in it and glory at the Man it killed. I wish I could have sat at the feet of my sweet Jesus as He died and let His blood cover me, then maybe I could fully understand His sacrifice. But I am here, where I am, and I think I get it. I have bathed in the blood of Jesus, and I let Him cleanse me white as snow.
But the stains remain. The stains are still there, because I can never return to who I was after drenched in the blood of Messiah. The stains remind me that my blood does not have to spill for my sin; the stains remind me I have bathed in the blood of the One who already did that. May they never wash off.
"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin."
1 John 1:7
