Change Clothes and Go

“She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs with no fear of the future.” (Proverbs 31: 25 NLT)

Following standard operating procedure, I waited until the very last possible minute to select an outfit to wear to an event. I walked into the closet and immediately eyed one of my favorite ensembles. It was ready-to-wear and I was ready to go, except there was one slight problem: it was too big due a recent weight loss. Bummer!

I was running out of time and options. So, I decided to wear it anyway and prayed it wasn’t obviously over-sized. It was and my elderly aunt was the first to notice. She said, “That’s too big for you. Don’t you want to change clothes?”

‘No, this will have to do,’ I told her— much to my regret. All evening, the outfit that had at one time fit and made me feel fabulous, now made me feel sloppy and inappropriately dressed. Back at home, I retired those useless things to the giveaway pile.

It really doesn’t pay to hold onto something from the past especially if you’ve outgrown it. That outfit represented something from my past that no longer fit the woman I’d become. My insistence on wearing it made me look and feel awkward.

Twenty years ago, God drew a friend away from a life of prostitution. She made Jesus her Lord, married a minister and became a homemaker. This woman’s current life is so far removed from her past. And, there is nothing in her behavior that speaks of the former life or old creation—it has passed away.

It’s not that she’s totally forgotten from whence she’s come; she just will not wear her former life like that outfit I wore to my family dinner. She has put off the former person and embraced the new one.

Christians, like me, have a hard time letting go of useless things. We can wear remnants of our pasts like I wore my old clothes. The thing we fail to consider is that the old clothes just don’t fit anymore. What would my friend look like if she continued to wear her old hooking clothes to a PTO meeting or out to dinner with her husband? She wouldn’t reflect who she is in Christ - let alone who she is to her husband and children.