Stained & Secured

It's harvest season again and I've been getting loads of veggies from Pegleg--particularly tomatoes. I decided I would make some pasta sauce and freeze it for later because Ragu doesn't exist.

I know putting spaghetti sauce stains Tupperware. I did it plenty times before. So I decided I would freeze my pasta sauce in an ice cube tray. I would have little bricks of pasta sauce and I could defrost just as much as I needed.

Monday is my Sabbath. This was my Sabbath project--skinning & boiling tomatoes down to a sauce. I pulled out my ice cube tray from the cabinet and started pouring red tomato sauce into the little molds. I put the tray in the freeze and went to bed.

I couldn't sleep. HOW STUPID AM I?! I just put RED tomato sauce into my ice cube tray! I was going to have a reddish/pink stained ice cube tray in the morning! I rolled around trying to think of some remedy for my disastrous idea(stupid thing to lose sleep over, isn't it?) . I got none.

A reddish/pink stained ice cube tray is still an ice cube tray. It will still do what it was created to do--make ice cubes--white plastic or reddish/pink stained plastic. The tomato sauce stains on the ice cube tray don't define the ice cube tray.

I often look at myself as a tomato sauce stained ice cube tray. Words said to me, visions ingrained in me, sins done against me--all sitting inside leaving their red stains in and on my life. There's bitterness, anger, shame, guilt, and whole array of stains and residue in my life because of what I let in. But my stains don't define me. I am a child of God. I am a fellow heir with Christ.

And I fell asleep to that. My identity secured in Christ--not my past, present, or future. Tuesday when I got home from work, I popped the frozen bricks of pasta sauce out of the tray into a plastic bag. When I looked at the tray, there were no stains at all.

"But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." 1 Corinthians 6:11