by Tad Lindley
Kipnuk was the first place I became a regular consumer of seal oil. We ate food stored in seal oil, food dipped in seal oil, seal oil in soup, seal oil in akutaq, and seal oil as an energy drink to keep warm in cold weather. The only thing that I have found so far that doesn’t work well, is seal oil in Top Ramen.
Seal oil stains
It did not take long for me to discover that even a small drop of seal oil leaves a stain that will never go away. All of those nice shirts I bought at Fred Meyer for my first teaching job ended up polka-dotted with seal oil stains. I also learned an important truth at that time: there is no stain remover on earth that can remove seal oil stains. Eventually I learned to strip down to an undershirt or put on an apron when eating to save my work wardrobe.
Then it hit me!
Just recently it hit me, if you were to just dip the whole shirt in seal oil, then it would all be stained and nobody would know the difference. Everybody would think, “His clothes sure look nice, but he smells like he eats a lot of seal oil!”
Sin stains the fabric of our lives
We were stained when the sins of others splashed over into our lives. We were molested, physically abused, bullied, broken by parental alcoholism, lied to, lied about, or simply let down by the failures of someone else. And if that weren’t bad enough, add to that the many of our own sins that left us living with guilt, shame, and fear. For many of us when we contemplated the stains of sin on our lives, we decided to overlap sin stain with sin stain. Drunkenness relieved the shame of our past, and that led to more sin and more consequences. Periodically we would look back on our lives and realize that we had dipped our whole lives in sin.
The great stain remover
Isaiah 1:18 tells us, Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. This seems impossible, that a garment made from white cloth and then stained with red berries, or blood, or even seal oil, would ever be able to look new again, and yet here it is promised to us in the word of God.
How is this even possible?
If you study the Bible diligently, you will come across this often ignored scripture, Acts 2:38. It describes the way that the stain of sin is removed: Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Notice that Peter told the people, who were asking how to be saved from their sins, that baptism in Jesus Christ produces the result of the remission or removal of sins.
What are you waiting for?
Baptism in the original language means to be dipped into a fluid. People were literally immersed in water in the name of Jesus and the stain of their sin was removed from the fabric of their very soul. If you have not been immersed in water in Jesus’ name for the remission of sin, the time is now. Consider the story of the Ethiopian eunuch: And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him. (Acts 8:36-38) The rivers and lakes are ice free, if you have not been baptized in Jesus’ name, it’s time to dip your whole being into Jesus Christ!
Reverend Tad Lindley is a minister at the United Pentecostal Church in Bethel, Alaska.
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