Isaac the Pure

Walking home from school, Sam Johnson can tell something is bothering his friend Isaac Morton, and by the time they reach Whit's End he has pried it out of him. A bunch of kids gather by the school's side door every afternoon, and the talk always slides into dirty jokes. Isaac laughs along with everyone else, but afterward he feels bad - dirty, even. Whit, overhearing, tells Isaac that feeling troubled by impure things is actually healthy, and that the Bible speaks highly of people who want to be pure. Isaac decides that is exactly what he wants. But when he asks how, Whit leaves the boys to think it over for themselves.

Isaac, as usual, finds the hardest possible way to do it. Reasoning that the best way to be pure is to get rid of everything around him that is not pure, he boxes up most of his own books, records, and toys - even his Disney read-along records, since better safe than sorry - and has started in on the living room by the time his father catches him hauling away the family's magazines, including a beloved collection of National Geographics. Dad persuades him to put other people's property back, and at Sam's suggestion Isaac carts his four boxes to Hamstrung's Junk Shop, planning to give the money to church or charity. There the fast-talking Indigo Methuselah Hamstrung informs him that the shop runs on an exchange system, no cash, and haggles Isaac into trading his boxes - and his wagon - for a sooty, broken mantel clock that Hamstrung swears is a genuine Swiss antique from the reign of "Queen Alberta." As Isaac leaves, Hamstrung crows to Gertrude about what he has finally gotten rid of.

Isaac's parents, priding themselves on being too modern to correct him, compliment his industriousness and merely ask to be included in future decisions. Isaac then throws himself into restoring the clock, cleaning and polishing it for a week and running straight home from school every day. When Sam finally catches up with him, he passes along the gang's latest jokes, the last one turns out to be crude, and Isaac laughs before he can stop himself. Miserable at being impure again, he snaps at Sam, they quarrel over the worthless clock, and Sam storms out. Alone, Isaac concludes that people are what keep him from staying pure - so, except for school, he locks himself in his room, away from the world's bad influences.

Whit comes to see him, apologizing for not explaining more clearly what purity really is, and coaxes Isaac back to Whit's End to try to repair the clock. While he works, Whit explains that purity is not just hiding from evil or behaving well on the outside; it is an expression of the heart. The religious leaders of Jesus' day obsessed over outward cleanness, and Jesus told them it is what is inside a person that makes him clean or unclean - he even compared them to beautiful tombs full of dead men's bones. Isaac realizes he has had it backwards: purity happens on the inside and shows up on the outside, not the other way around. The clock itself makes the perfect object lesson - Isaac polished the outside beautifully, but it could not work until someone cleaned and repaired the inside, just as Jesus does for us when we accept him into our hearts. Right on cue, the clock begins to tick. As for its pedigree, Whit gently reveals it is less a Victorian Swiss antique and more a Sears and Roebuck special from President Eisenhower's time - but a very nice clock all the same.

Carrying the clock home through McAlister Park, Isaac makes up with Sam, and the two agree to keep each other accountable: no more dirty jokes. They run into Mr. Hamstrung, who takes one look at the gleaming, ticking clock and sputters that he has been conned - and now he wants to haggle to get it back. Isaac just smiles and keeps walking; the clock is worth a lot more now than it was. Whit closes with the heart of the matter: being pure is not something that happens just once. It is a process - we become pure as we let the love and goodness of God cleanse us from day to day.