Stained Handkerchief

Homemade laundry soap has not worked so well for me. I was really excited about it and went ahead and made it but I'm afraid that I'm finding a lot of stains in our clothes. Maybe I didn't do something right. I really wanted it to work for us. Maybe we wash too big a load? I doubled the amount of cups per load since it was so cheap to make, but that didn't seem to help either.

Somewhere in time I heard the illustration of sin being like a black stain on a white handkerchief. The handkerchief being the heart. I've been thinking about stains lately. Denial set in about my laundry but I've just about had it with the stains. Frank Peretti's book The Oath has also stirred a lot of thoughts within me about the handkerchief.

I guess if you had to explain the theory a little more in detail I would say that everyone gets a handkerchief the color of ecru. They all get stained but start out so faint against that background that you can't even tell at first. The owner eventually starts to notice that their handkerchief has some flaws. Some intentional and some that just couldn't be helped. Though, he or she tries to get that hanky cleaned up because the pesky stains are really getting on their nerves, it never seems to look white enough. The fact is, it never will look white on its own.
So the proprietor has only 2 choices to make. He can either keep the hanky ecru clean or just ignore the color and the deep stains set in all together. Can ecru ever look white? There is such a difference.
Of course there is the Weaver of it all that could change the color of the fabric from ecru to white, but that would require admitting that there is something very wrong with ecru. That the stains tend to blend in at first and that if you keep it free from heavy stains, you can't hardly tell how dirty it really stays.
Suppose the owner does come to the Master Weaver and He does such a thing for the helpless fellow. A new life starts out with a white handkerchief. Never again to pretend it is clean. At least not for long.
White is not a true color. It is a hue or shade of color. That is why as a white handkerchief it would show any stain clearly without it blending in. It would show for what it is. A stain would look so out of place. Surely it would make the owner uncomfortable. He would have to go to the Master Weaver with any problem in the fabric and the Master Weaver would make it clean again. If he didn't, the stains would soon set in and spread throughout the fabric to the point that it would eventually shade in most places ecru once again. The Master Weaver would see it and know. The owner would have to not care any more.

Sin is so much like this illustration. It blots our handkerchief and our minds. There is no question about the stain, the handkerchief's condition, and the Master Weaver's ability. The question that arises is which color is your handkerchief? Ecru or White?