The Right Outfit--July 23, 2020

The Right Outfit--July 23, 2020

"As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience." [Colossians 3:12]

When you know who you are, you don't have to spend your time and energy trying to get everybody else's attention so they can tell you who they think you are.  You are free.

Or maybe to be more precise, when the answer to "Who are you?" is "Beloved of God," you don't have to waste one breath trying to get other people to think you are "great" or a "winner"... or strong or important or attractive or wealthy or smart or anything else.  When your identity is grounded in being beloved of God, you are freed from the endlessly tedious game of finding the perfect outfit, having the "right" hairstyle, driving an impressive car, owning a bigger house, or proving to people how correct and smart you are.  You are simply free.

And once you're done worrying about whether your wardrobe is fashionable enough, you can get on a set of clothes that are considerably more functional and comfortably broken in: you can dress for the work that needs to be done and clothe yourself, as Colossians puts it, with "compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience."  Those are the things that matter anyhow.  Those are the things that will stay in someone else's memory.  

When I get to the end of my life, I think I will be far less interested in whether people remember what I wore to this big event or that special occasion.  I have a hunch that I will no longer care about what my hair has looked like, either, since every time I have tried a new hair style in my life in the quest for "cool," a few years later I would find myself blushing and shaking my head to look at old pictures of myself.  And honestly, if when someone remembers me, what they remember is, "Oh, he was the guy with the purple bow tie... or he was the one with the Chuck Taylor All-Star high-tops..." or whatever other odds and ends from my closet have stuck in their memory, rather than remembering, "Oh, he was the one who loved genuinely," or "He was the one who modeled how to endure with patience and grace," I think it will have been a waste of a lifetime.

So I have resolved not to care anymore--not to spend the money, the time, the fuss, or the mental bandwidth, on worry what other people think about the appearance stuff.  And instead, the letter to the Colossians is teaching me to spend the time learning to love... learning how to amplify others' voices rather than needing to be the center of attention... learning how to accompany others through difficult times without needing to make myself the hero.  Those, I suspect, will take more time and energy and thought than picking out an outfit or getting a haircut, and I will need all the time to practice that I can get.

And yet at the same time, being free from all the game-playing of caring about others' expectations makes me feel more fully alive.  And that, after all, is what God has been up to all along in my life, and in yours.  God is bringing us more fully to life, and we are more fully alive when our lives are clothed in compassion and kindness, humility and patience.  Then we're not hiding ugly souls in fancy outfits--we are learning to be the beautiful creations God made us to be all along.

Or maybe it's less like learning a new skill, so much as it is about learning to be comfortable in our belovedness.  Because this whole verse from Colossians starts with recognizing who and whose we are--we are beloved and chosen by God.  It is God's choosing, God's choice to love us, that makes us holy... and when we trust what God says about us, we don't have to worry what anybody else says or thinks about us.  And because God's love frees us from comparing ourselves to others or needing to be "better than" or "smarter than" or "richer than" anybody else, we can be comfortable in our own skin for once and treat others with compassion and grace. Like the song by the Afters goes, "Love will make you beautiful."  It will.  It already has.  And when we see that and dare to believe it, we can treat others in ways that recognize that they, too, are beloved of God, without feeling threatened that God's love for them somehow takes away love from us.  It doesn't--it isn't pie.

So as we face another day, friends, before you go through your closet or dresser drawers to find the right outfit for the day, and before you fuss about whether your hair looks right or not, start with this: remember that you are beloved.  Remember it. Say it out loud.  Own it.  And remember, too, that there is no one you will meet today (or ever) who is not beloved of God, too, just as much as you are.  And treat yourself, and everyone else whose path crosses with yours today, accordingly.  Remember whose you are, dear one, and whose we all are, and then all the other constricting and complicated game playing can be done. 

You are free of it all, already.

Lord God, let our belovedness sink in to our minds and hearts today, so that we spend our energy where it counts--in being people of compassion, rather than worrying about our fashion.