Are We on Mission?
Part of a cheerful commentary about summer missions, this photo is a beautiful reminder that many parts of the world have mastered walking by faith instead of living by bare eyesight. When Jesus' brother James cautioned a church not to "become judges with evil thoughts," it was because the church had a heart to praise men in fine clothes and to be unkind toward people who might be treated like dirt, dirt kind of like making enemies your footstool.
When I first knew Jesus had rescued me from being lost, I realized God had something more in store than how I was living at the time. I didn't realize, at that time, how much Heaven wanted me to learn. I did, however, recognize it was time to part with clothes that were from what I knew in heart was a wretched, lost way of life.
I can say that today, because I got saved and had a right heart. I was whole in Jesus for the first time, ever. And I didn't want to wear any reminder of how lost I had been.
Instead, I was oh so thankful to see photos of people on mission for Jesus in foreign places. I was thankful for the folk wearing flip flops standing next to folk wearing traditional shoes. I was thankful for casual skirts and just a whole new way of seeing. I was thankful to know I didn't need to be a vain slave to dry cleaning, anymore, ever.
But because I didn't look closely at myself anymore, because my focus was Heavenward, I didn't realize some clothing that felt right to wear was more form fitting than was in my heart to wear. When I went to give something to neighbors, I didn't know what clothes I had on. When I went to a church door one Sunday, I didn't know what clothes I had put on.
In hindsight, it was not that I didn't go in to church that day because of my skin tone, but because a door keeper saw I was making a mistake.
I was not dirty physically and not dirty in my heart. Salvation had given me a whole new heart, a whole new understanding. Yet there was something about my clothes that day that didn't match up with my heart. And I realize, now, what someone saw.
In years since then, after so many new and used clothes and shoes have been lost to vandalism, after having to wear my aunt's plus sizes to run to the library, after years learning to just put on whatever covers me, as long as it does speak my heart, I think I've gotten the full meaning of James' rebuke of the church that judges according to who it is who wears fine clothes.
As much as I've struggled to wear my heart each day, no different from the African-American nurse who it's been a comfort to see doesn't ever wear pants at all; as much as my few clothes (not enough to live truly functionally as a citizen of the U.S.) have been stretched or, on the other hand, made too small when "judges with evil thoughts" have taken them to either soil or alter them; as many times as I've been oh so thankful that the love of Jesus had provided exactly the right thing to wear (with exactly the right fit for my heart) only to have the clothes ruined; as evil as the struggle to just put on clothes has been, I have learned that as long as I'm dressed right in heart, and as long as whatever I have matches my heart, no matter how imperfect vandalism, assault, and financial robbery have made what I have: no matter any of that, I know a Savior who comforted Israel in a years-long wilderness, whose way is easy, who says all I need to do is wash my robes and be clean.
Many people, all over this world, know that so well. Many of our ancestors who lived through the perils of slavery and slavery's aftermath knew that so well. Wash, and live each day clean in heart.
That's being thankful in all circumstances. That's being one who endures and lives. That's one who understands the difference between the church door keeper who wouldn't let me in in clothes that didn't match my heart (clothes like I had to wear one day when there was nothing else to throw on when a cousin was briefly in town), and the church that seemed to welcomed me (when all I had was sneakers and a coat that were too large) but who, truthfully, only let me in to see how to judge me. One church was discerning, the other church wrong.
When Jesus told the parable of the stranger a king bound and punished for not wearing wedding garments when the stranger was among those called out of the street to a wedding for his son, the parable makes no sense if the reader is thinking about actual clothes. But the parable does make sense when the Christian recognizes the clothing the king is looking at is how the man is in heart. Is the man adulterous in heart? If so, that's not what you want seen at a son's wedding. Yet, obviously, others who were called out of the streets into the wedding hall are not physically dressed for a wedding but dressed clean in heart.
...
At the same hospital where a nurse physically dresses according to her heart, a doctor whose faith I wondered about a little, put her arm around me one day, as if we were taking a picture together. Like with some others on this journey, that moment wasn't lasting.
But as to that moment, only the love of Jesus knew the being on one accord that I have needed, to know life is well, even if only for a season.
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