clothes...they really do tell a lot sometimes. In my study last night, I read again the story of Lazarus. His were graveclothes. I remembered the times I've chosen the clothes for a burial garment. I remember going to purchase a new one for my father-in-law. And I remember the years I walked around with my graveclothes on.…(continued in comment)
Yikes !! Yes, I wore them for years, dressed up in the finery of my good behavior. Graveclothes are what dead people wear, and I was dead… a breathing, heart-beating, walking, talking, dead person. They are everywhere. People who just think they are alive.
Jesus provided a new garment, a garment more fine than any of mine, perfect in fact. Perfect. …. I never accomplished that myself. He did. He offered it to me time and time again. I said I accepted it, but I never put it on….I couldn’t figure out how it fit.
Then, in frustration and utter defeat, I quit trying and accepted the clothes I had on. I continued to wear them, tried to make them look as good as possible…(even washed them in the baptistry a couple times)….and went on with my existence. I even tried to put my clothes on other people. Mine looked a little bit better than theirs, I thought. But they usually rejected them, choosing to wear their own grave clothes.
Then one day, in the middle of a stormy time of my existence, when all I could say was ‘Help me.”…He called me out. Oh relax…I didn’t hear a Charlton Heston voice say my name…..but since that day everything changed. Just as Jesus said ‘Loose him and let him go’ after He had called Lazarus out of the grave, He has loosed me. I’m not wearing the grave clothes anymore.
“…she will be dressed in white and I will never blot out her name from the book of life, but will acknowledge her name before My Father and His angels.” Rev. 3:5
