A Garment of Praise

On Friday, I wore heels to work. Usually, I wear more practical shoes, but since Friday was parent teacher conferences and I was only working until noon, I decided I could deal with heels. I told my coworker that I like the click my heels make as I walk down the halls- they make me feel important. Saturday evening I went to a Chinese New Year celebration with my family. Dressing up to go out made me feel elegant and sophisticated. As I walked back into the house after the celebration, I reflected that I felt like a different person than I had that morning, hanging out with friends, wearing a gazillion layers to keep warm in a cabin heated only be the fireplace. What I wear changes my self-perception. It influences the way I act. As I was thinking about that, the phrase “put on a garment of praise” popped into my head.


I couldn’t remember where it came from, so I looked it up. It’s from the same passage in Isaiah 61 that Jesus reads in Nazareth towards the beginning of his ministry. “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me . . . to provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” (v. 1&3) Later on in the same passage it goes on to say, “I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness. . .” (v.10)

If something as simple as putting on a pair of heels or wearing jewelry can change the way we feel about ourselves, imagine what a difference being clothed in praise, salvation, and righteousness would make in our lives. The beautiful thing is, we don’t need to strive on our own to be robed in righteousness and praise. All through this passage we see that this is God’s work for God’s glory. He tenderly, lovingly, heals our hurts, releases us from captivity, and adorns us to be whole and beautiful. If we have accepted the work of His son’s death on the cross, we are already crowned in beauty, anointed with the oil of gladness, robed in righteousness, and wearing garments of praise and salvation.

Now that we are dressed as children of God, we must live as children of God. Once you’re dressed for a party, you don’t stop and wash the dishes. If you’re wearing high heels, you probably aren’t about to go play in the mud. Wearing our garment of praise, we shouldn’t be found speaking discouraging, complaining words. Dressed in righteousness, we need to avoid the sin that would soil our spotless robes. Living with a crown of beauty and a garment of salvation, we should walk securely in the knowledge that we are loved by God and our lives are safe in his hand.

So, I encourage you today, remember- you are clothed in praise. The blood of Christ has given you a robe of righteousness. You are crowned in beauty and anointed with gladness. Remember what you are wearing. Let your actions be ruled by the precious clothes Christ’s blood has purchased for you. Let your knowledge of yourself be based on robes that you have no right to wear, but that God has placed on you after rescuing you, giving you all the rights to those royal robes as someone born to wear them. When you do, here is what God says will happen, “[you] will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.” (v.3) [Your] descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the LORD has blessed." (v.9)

My life list

I wrote this list about 4 years ago, after reading a friend's book that listed a lot of things to do- some important, others trivial. I found it today, so here, in no particular order, is my list. Some of the things on the list I'm no longer sure I want to do. Others I've already done (I've marked those with an asterisk) and a few I have plans to complete in the next year or so (I've marked those with a pound sign)
*1. Eat sushi
2. Ride in a hot air balloon
3. Ride on a motorcycle
4. Take singing lessons
5. Sketch a lake
6. Paint the sky
*7. Sponsor a child (Damaris in Ecuador)
8. Build a snow fort that has a roof
*9. Go to a Thai restaurant
*10. Find a copy of Five Little Peppers All Grown Up and read it. (I read it online!)
#11. Live in a Latin American country for a couple of years
*12. Spend the summer in a country in Asia, learning the language
*13. Make a quilt (Does a machine sewed t-shirt quilt count?)
14. Make a doll house
15. Learn to crochet
*16. Travel through Europe
17. Be an au pair in Spain
18. Visit Puerto Rico
19. Make an annotated list of historical fiction for kids
20. Make taffy
21. Plant tulips and daffodils
22. Go to the Arctic circle in summer when it’s bright at midnight
23. Become bilingual in English and Spanish (On a good day I consider myself bilingual, but not quite fluent. On a bad day, not so much)
24. Teach in a bilingual class
*25. Get my ESL certification
26. See Michelangelo’s David
*27. See the Sistine Chapel (And Michelangelo's Pieta was there! An added bonus)
28. Memorize Romans 8
29. Read all the Newberry Award books
#30. Live in a city (Well, since it was on my list, I guess I didn't think my 5 months in Ecuador counted. Bogota for 2 years should count though)
31. Go to California (I don't think landing in the airport there counts, right?)
32. Read The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
33. Wear a dress form the 1860’s complete with a hoop skirt
34. Buy a pair of navy blue dress shoes
#35. Do some sort of missions/volunteer work with street kids
36. Write a book
37. Get a masters degree
38. Visit Stonehenge
39. Ride a gondola in Venice (I was SO close. I've been to Venice, the gondola will have to wait)
40. Walk on the great wall of China
41. Go on a safari
42. Fall in love
43. Get married
44. Have kids
*45. Buy a shepherd to complete my crèche.
*46. Find the name of that painting that I loved from the Musee d’Orsay. (I saw a book at Barnes and Noble about the Musee d'Orsay and looked through until I found it. It's called Haymaking and is by Jules Bastien-Lepage)

Dynamisms

We're in the midst of state mandated ESL testing at work, not usually the most entertaining few weeks of the year. Dynamo's done a pretty good job at entertaining me though, despite the tedium of reading "when you get to the stop sign, remember, put your hand on the stop sign, put your pencil down, and look at me. You may begin" ad nauseam. He raised his hand half way through the test and when I called on him he said, "You are talking like a computer." He was right. There's something about reading test administration manuals aloud that makes you sound like a recording. Try it sometime.

The listening test narrates a sequence of events and then asks the children to choose the pictures that are in the same order. Yesterday Dynamo finished his writing assignment early, so I told him to draw a picture of his story on the back. When I came back to his seat, I saw a picture of children throwing snowballs with an arrow pointing to children building a snow fort. Underneath it were the same 2 pictures, but in reverse. Each had a bubble to fill in next to it. He had a second set too, of kids watching tv and drinking hot cocoa. "Look" He said. "You have to pick which one it is". I turned over his paper, read his story, and filled in the bubble next to the right order for each of his questions. Too cute.

Advocating

On my purse is a Forgotten Voices pin. I was thinking the other day, that despite the fact that it has been on there for months now, not a single person has asked me about it. And, since no one has asked, I haven't said anything. Never once have I told someone who didn't ask me about it about Forgotten Voices, despite the wonderful work they're doing to help orphan kids who desperately need help, who need our voices so people know they need help. I found myself wondering why it's so difficult to bring up when there have been other things I've advocated for easily-gmail, meet-up groups. . . At my grandmother's the other day, my mom was once again telling someone how wonderful badger balm was. "I sound like an advertisement" she said. "Why is it so easy", I wondered, "to advocate for those things?" And then it struck me. People need them. No one wants dry skin, we all use e-mail. People are happy to listen to our suggestions that might meet their needs.

And then, I remembered something else. A scene from years ago. I was sitting in the car in the grocery store parking lot. My Mom had probably run in for groceries. A woman came by, pushing her loaded shopping cart, a little child in the seat. I was filled with a sudden realization that these people had eternal souls and needed to know God's plan so they could spend eternity with him.

That's what I'm reminding myself of now. Some things are more difficult for us to advocate. We're afraid of being rejected, or laughed at by people who don't want to hear our message. But, they still need to hear it, much more than they need another remedy for dry skin, a more convenient e-mail provider, a great way to meet people with similar interests. They need our message, and that should give us the boldness to tell them.

"Therefore, we are the Messiah's representatives, as though God were pleading through us. We plead on the Messiah's behalf: "Be reconciled to God!" 2 Corinthinas 5:20