Simply Covered

It was a hot, humid summer day. We had woken up early and gotten dressed and as we all piled into the truck Shane decided to take the trash to the dump before we headed out. Gabe was around 7 or 8 I guess and enjoyed helping Shane dump the trash so he immediately began to ask if he could help. (Boy how times have changed...haha). After much begging Shane finally agreed and as we pulled into the dump Gabe unbuckled his seat belt and all but jumped out of the truck before Shane could put it into park.

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They were throwing the trash into the dumpsters one bag at the time and when all the trash was out of the truck I noticed that Gabe quietly slipped back into his seat. We pulled out with not much talking going on. The radio was playing and everyone was in their own world more or less. I don't really know what made me look back but I just sort of turned my head and noticed Gabe had his leg propped up and was poking at something.

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"What are you doing?" I asked him.

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He looked up at me as if he wanted to cry but instead he just laid his leg down. There was a huge gash in his leg and blood was pouring down the inside of his calf! "Shane!" I yelled "Stop the truck!"

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Shane whipped into a convenience store parking lot and we both started looking at Gabe's leg. Knowing we were no where near a doctor's office I grabbed some napkins and held his skin together while Shane went inside to buy something to clean his leg with. We cleaned Gabe's leg and put some band-aids on his leg so tight as to hold the wound together.

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I remember Gabe's white sock being soaked in blood all day long. We were able to clean the blood off of his leg but that sock was worthless...had to be thrown away. Yesterday as I was driving home I heard a song on the radio and although I cannot remember all the details one line of the song is stuck in my head "I am covered in the blood." I have always thought about my sins being "washed" in the blood but "covered" in the blood seemed to make more sense to me.

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You know when you wash something the soap has a tendency to run off but when you cover something...it is there for the long haul! That is exactly what Jesus has done for us! He has covered us in his blood and it doesn't matter what dingy, nasty, ugly thing we soak into his blood, it will always come out white!

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"...they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb..." Revelation 7:15 (NIV).