Photo and Commentary (c)2025 by Maylan Schurch
Sabbath, January 3, 2026
The day after Christmas I was taking my usual after-breakfast walk when I spotted this beautiful red Toyota. But I’d never seen it colorfully festooned with yellow spurts.
I studied it carefully. Was it art? After all, two blocks away I once saw a little Cooper Mini carefully painted, front-to back, with real artists’ paint. It looked beautiful. But if the above automobile was an art project, I realized that I would have to do a great deal of study on the topic of abstract art before I might be able to discern a “message” in it.
Finally, my curiosity got the better of me. I reached out a finger, captured some of the yellow on it, and tasted it. Sure enough, it was mustard. And then I saw the yellow splotches on the curb. Somebody had pulled an after-Christmas prank.
The next morning the car wasn’t there. Instead, it was parked safely up in the driveway, and a lot of water droplets on its hood may have indicated that the owner had sloshed off all of the yellow that very morning.
James 1:27 boils true religion down into two essentials. “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this,” he says, “to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”
That’s what this car owner did. Spots – however sidesplittingly funny the applier may have thought them — don’t belong on a car somebody else owns. (Would mustard cause problems to the paint?) The owner didn’t delay, but scrubbed those spots off.
God is always willing to forgive us our sins and eradicate our “spots.” To learn more, click the link just below:
https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/forgiveness