Knowing Your Style And Wearing It

My mother and I went shopping the other day.  We both decided that we would like to have a new dress.  Walking into one particular store, there was a great sale going on; with excitement we began to peruse the racks of clothes.  My Mom chose several to try on — I did, too.

As I was walking down one aisle, I took note of a mannequin and what it was wearing.  Would that look good on me?  I searched the nearby racks and found the dress.  Pulling it out I began to have my doubts.  However, I looked again at the mannequin and  thought how good it looked.  I wasn’t sure at all, doubts swirling in my mind, but I took the garment of uncertainty and went to the dressing room.

Oh, no!  Not good!  As quickly as I put it on, I took it off again!  When I returned the dress to it’s rack, I looked menacingly at the mannequin.  How dare it look good when I didn’t!  What had gone wrong?  Well, I mused, a mannequin is unchanging.  It’s created perfectly and stays that way.  Humans, on the other hand, are constantly changing with age.  Bulges appear where once we thought such a thing an impossibility.  There’s nothing we can do about that in our physical worlds.  We have to accept that  — there comes a time in our lives when we don’t look 20 anymore.  Therefore, we have to change our styles accordingly.

Is it the same in our spiritual worlds?  Wonderfully, it doesn’t have to be.  When we become Christians, the Bible talks about “putting on Christ.”  We read in Romans 13:14,  “Clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, and don’t let yourself think about ways to indulge your evil desires.”  When we choose to dress ourselves in the ways of Jesus, and when we keep that spiritual clothing on, we actually look better and better, no matter our ages.  In fact, the more we mature in the Lord, the better our clothes fit as our behavior and speech takes on the resemblance of Jesus.  In our spiritual worlds, we need not be discouraged about age distorting our once youthful bodies, because in our spiritual worlds, when we choose to keep ourselves “clothed with Jesus,” then age doesn’t matter at all.  We can walk around wearing a garment of praise.  When we are “clothed with Jesus,” we have everything of Himself to get us through all our situations in life.  When we are clothed in Jesus — that’s a classy style that never grows old.