John Ortberg talks about confession in language most of us can relate to.
Some years ago, we traded in my old Volkswagen Super Beetle for our first piece of new
furniture: a mauve sofa. It was roughly the shade of Pepto-Bismol, but because it represented to
us a substantial investment, we thought “mauve” sounded better.
The man at the furniture store warned us not to get it when he found out we had small children.
“You don’t want a mauve sofa,” had advised. “Get something the color of dirt.” But we had the
naïve optimism of you parenthood. “We know how to handle our children,” we said. “Give us the mauve sofa.”
From that moment on, we all knew clearly the number one rule in the house. Don’t sit on the
mauve sofa. Don’t touch the mauve sofa. Don’t play around the mauve sofa. Don’t eat on,breathe on, look at, or think about the mauve sofa. Remember the forbidden tree in the Garden of
Eden.? “On every other chair in the house you may freely sit, but upon this sofa, the mauve sofa,you may not sit, for in the day you sit thereupon, you shall surely die.”
Then came The Fall.
One day there appeared on the mauve sofa a stain. A red stain. A red jelly stain.
So my wife, who had chosen the mauve sofa and adored it, lined up our three children in front of
it: Laura, age four, and Malory, two and a half, and Johnny, six months.
“Do you see that children?” she asked. “That’s a stain. A red stain. A red jelly stain. The man at the sofa store says it is not coming out. Not forever. Do you know how long forever is children?
That’s how long we’re going to stand here until one of you tells me who put the stain on the
mauve sofa.”