On April 15, it snowed.  

Enough to cover the grass.  Enough that I could carve a heart on the windshield for my wife.  Enough to cause a 50 vehicle pile-up on Chicago's Kennedy Expressway, sending twelve people to the hospital.

It's tempting to call this an "inconvenient snow."  It is spring, after all.  April showers, not April blizzards, are supposed to bring May flowers. For anybody now dealing with an insurance headache and a car in the body shop, it certainly was an inconvenient snow.

Me, I took a walk in it. I made sure that hike took me past a storybook spread of white-frosted pines. Pure magic!

The still-falling flakes brought to mind Psalm 51:7. “Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

But God’s call to purity is rarely a thing of convenience, I’ve noticed. On the surface, life appears to be going well.  Church is good. We’re engaged, perhaps, in our daily “quiet time” in the Word.

Yet, God knows our hearts. He sees the filth we've somehow allowed.  Or collected.  Or sprouted from the seeds of our dark deeds. 

He sees it.  Hates it.  Offers to clean it—and us.  Yet He does all of this only with our full cooperation. 

Purity demands honesty.

Purity requires confession.

Purity insists on repentance.

Purity is not convenient.  

But only a pure heart will see God.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

—Jesus