Lesson 300: "Keeping Your Garments White"

Some of you may not be old enough to understand the illustrations I will be using in this study but I am going to give it a shot anyway. You might remember hearing the old clichés; “I feel like I have been run through the wringer” or “I am going to hang him/her out to dry”! These adages stem way back to the days when we (or our grandmothers) had to take their clothes to the laundry each week to wash. Now I am not speaking of a laundry-mat where there are shiny new automatic washing machines lined up; you put a couple of quarters in them and sit patiently while they do your laundry. I am talking about the ancient, drafty buildings with wet floors and the smell of bleach, soap and starch. There were four large tubs with a wringer mounted in the center of the four tubs. The first tub had a lid and an agitator inside of it and you filled this with hot water, bleach and detergent (or for the really elderly this would have been lye soap shaved from a bar). Then you pulled the lever attached to the side of the tub to start the agitator and began to fill the tub with your “whites”. There was another lever that would shoot a burst of steam into the tub bringing the water to the “zenith of heat”!

While the whites were sloshing away in the hot-tub, you filled the other three with cold water adding bleach to the first tub, leaving the second one clear and adding “just a tad” of a product called bluing to the last tub. Now it was time to open the heating vat and start poking the piping hot clothes into the wringer to make their way into the “bleach tub”. Oops! I forgot to tell you to step back a foot or two before opening the vat or you would get a steam bath, however this was good for the complexion. And we were thankful that the wringers were run by electricity since the olden ones were equipped with a handle that you had to turn to get the wringer going. You needed a wooden stick to pull the sizzling clothes out of the vat since they were too hot to touch (I don’t think there were rubber gloves then) and then you used this stick to poke the whites down into the bleach tub. This of course made the second tub of water too hot to handle so again the stick came into play as the washing was run through the wringer into the clear water tub. Things are getting whiter but still there is the dunking into the bluing for the final touch.

After wringing the last article they were dropped into a basket which was made of wicker and not plastic, although sometimes a smaller galvanized tub would be used (depending on your financial status in life). No stopping yet! We still had to starch! Starch was mixed with cold water and hung under yet another steam pipe and brought to a boil to thicken, then added to a tub of cold water for just the right strength. The beautiful white clothes were dipped into this tepid mixture and once again “wrung”. Our “dryer” was a line strung between two poles over a grassy plot in the back yard; the grass coming from the “drippings” of the wet clothes. Making sure we “swiped” the line with a damp rag to remove all grime and dirt before using, we then hung the clothes out in the sunshine to dry. Now you know how grandmother got her “garments white”! Now you know a bit about what God puts a Christian through to keep their garments white!

White has a great reflection of light when the sun shines upon it; what a beautiful reflection our white garments will make when the SON shines upon us. “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43). We do not “just get saved” and wait with folded hands for the Jesus to come and take us to Heaven. We must keep up appearances by keeping our garments white, all the while doing the work of God here on earth. This can be dirty work but God is like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap (Mal. 3:2). He will use live coals to clean up our mouth and take away our guilt (Isa. 6:6-7); He will refine us by fire (Zech. 13:9); He will purify, refine and spot-clean (Dan. 12:10); He will allow us to go into the furnace of affliction (Isa. 48:10); Christians will suffer persecution (2 Tim. 3:12); and be insulted for the name of Christ (1 Pet. 4:14). We may be “put through the wringer” and “hung out to dry” (2 Cor. 4:8-9) but we must count it all joy (James 1:2) and keep doing good (1 Pet. 4:19).

“They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy” (Rev. 3:4b); “I counsel you to buy white clothes so you can cover your shameful nakedness” (Rev. 3:18); “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count….they were wearing white robes” (Rev. 7:9).

“COME NOW, LET US REASON TOGETHER. THOUGH YOUR SINS

ARE LIKE SCARLET, THEY SHALL BE AS WHITE AS SNOW”
(Isa. 1:18).