Stain Remover

So, the day after the wedding, family and friends gathered at the parents-of-the-groom’s home for a wonderful buffet. I’m not one for meat pies but I have to say the Melton Mowbray pie was fantastic. 

However, this is not about delicious pies, champagne or strawberries. It’s about red wine, and how for the third time in my life, someone taller than me has spilled a sprinkling of red wine across my shoulders. 

Not to worry, I reassured my hostess. I’ve got some red wine stain remover at home, and it always works. 

I hadn’t reckoned with a two day delay until I got home. Nor had I reckoned with a very nice white bolero sweater which could only be washed in cold water. I used my trusty spray and threw the sweater into the cold wash, only to be disappointed to discover four conspicuous dark stains still there after the cycle. 

I used the Vanish bar. Then the Fels Naphtha bar, a fifty-year-old remedy from the Midwest which my mother still swears by, and indeed, until now it has always done the trick on the hardest stains.

Nada. By now I was afraid that I would rub the fine knit into an ugly ball, so I let it drop back into the cold water and soak while I walked Dusty. 

It is still soaking, twelve hours later, but I do believe it is fading a bit. 

So the moral – besides always ensuring nobody with red wine is trying to push past behind you – is that even the most stubborn stains may eventually come out with enough soaking. 

My soul is pretty badly stained. Don’t know about yours. But I think that if the stains are ever going to come out, I need to soak in the Spirit, soak in the Word, soak in Prayer. 

Jesus says that he will make my sins whiter than snow. Now that’s the main stain I want removed. 

But I would be grateful, too, if when I wake up in the morning, the wine stain on my shoulders has disappeared.