Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“Come now, let us settle the matter,”
    says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
    they shall be like wool.

• Isaiah 1:18

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

• Ephesians 5:25-27

You know how the story goes.  You invite people over.  You fix a special meal.  Someone spills something on your special tablecloth.  And then, you wash the tablecloth, but it is forever stained.  And then, in a bizarre twist of events, you rarely invite anyone over.  You never have that special meal, not even for the family.  But since the tablecloth was special, you hang onto it.

I was cleaning out my wife’s wardrobe.  She had two closets basically, a closet and then a closet-sized cloth covered wardrobe.  She would make a pilgrimage to the basement and the realm of my portal into the blogosphere to step around my domain and switch summer clothing for winter clothing.  The point was nearly moot due to kidney dialysis always requiring a short-sleeved shirt, and one you do not mind getting blood-stained.

Note: Hydrogen peroxide removes blood stains.  It chemically reacts with the blood.  Even dried blood will bubble up on the cloth and turn to a white substance that easily washes away, with some rubbing of the stain under water.  It might take 4-5 applications to get it all, keep reapplying until it is all gone, but I have restored some of her favorite blouses to nearly brand new condition.

But in providing about 40 kitchen trash bags full of clothing, all carefully folded, to the Vietnam Veterans, I have cleaned the wardrobe.  In the bottom of the wardrobe, underneath the hanging clothes, I found a huge stack of winter pajamas.  Since she passed away in mid-March, it meant she had been wearing summer pajamas all winter.  But in the middle of all those pajamas, sandwiched in so that no one would notice, there was a German tablecloth and eight embroidered linen napkins.

The stains were a pale brown, more of a rusty color.

Then, the memories flooded back.

When my wife was healthy and we had a nice house, not the over-sized closet we have now, she entertained.  She even entertained after we moved here, but it was a chore hauling stuff to the basement, making the basement inoperative, so that we had enough room in the living room and kitchen to have guests.  As we got older, we just could not maintain the pace of moving furniture and her crafting supplies from one place to another.  And often she lost something that we had to buy, and then we found the original.

But this tablecloth and those napkins meant a lot to both of us.

I mentioned the checkerboard tablecloth in a different post, but that was stained and ruined long ago.

This tablecloth has a rough map of West Germany, with a couple of places in East Germany mentioned.  Note: We lived there for three years during the Cold War.  The photo above shows the tablecloth and the stack of napkins to the left of where we lived for three years, Karlsruhe.

Whenever she pulled out this tablecloth, it meant German food.  And her favorite family style German meal was sauerbraten.  If I could crank up the spare generator on my memory cells, I could think of the side dishes.  I think asparagus and some kind of noodles.  She had attempted spätzle noodles, but she was never satisfied with her experiments. Then maybe some German potato salad and red cabbage.

But with sauerbraten, you have sauce.  With sauce, you have an exponentially greater chance of spills.  And the spills become brown stains, kind of a rusty brown stain.

When we had the embroidered napkins in use, with a matching tablecloth, we had a major spill problem.  The tablecloth was thrown out, but the napkins were washed to the point of the stains being fairly faint.  I commented at the time, ducking the pan she threw in my direction (kidding, but I ducked just in case), I said, “Do you not find it odd that linen napkins are ruined by using them for the purpose for which they were designed?”

Yes, she did not throw a pot at me, but she was not happy either.

So, as I took the napkins and the tablecloth out and carefully set them aside, I saw that the off-white napkins had uneven swirls of rusty brown and the spot underneath where the napkins are located in the photo, there are two fist sized spots where one of our own boys, and not a visiting friend or his parents, that were friends of ours, had spilled an entire plate of sauerbraten, and my wife looked at the tablecloth and said, “Never again.”

We’ve had sauerbraten again.  We even treated a group of homeless families to sauerbraten when our church hosted the homeless for a local charity.  But the tablecloth was only halfway folded, mostly balled into an irregular shape.  My attempt to iron it was only moderately successful.  It seems it wants to return to the wadded ball.

But as I see the stains, for those who have Jesus in their hearts, I am reminded that God has separated us from our sins.  He no longer sees them.  The scarlet is like snow.  The crimson is like wool.  All the spilled sauerbraten in the world could not separate us from God’s love.

And so, the tablecloth is now restored to the table, stains and all.  Each time I see it. I remember my wife who could cook cuisine from many different countries, and you would think it to be the genuine thing.  And she could keep the food coming while never missing a beat in the conversation.  She was not just a hostess, she was the emcee of a grand event.

“Oh, honey, can you fix our guests some Fresh Strawberries Romanoff for dessert?  And make it a strawberry milkshake for each of the children.”

And I praise God for those wonderful evenings with friends.  While our guests got to see her culinary and hostess skills once or twice, I was there, front row seat, for each event.  Sure, I occasionally made some strawberry desserts laced with a few liquors, but most of the time, front row seat.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.