Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. – Colossians 3:14 (NRSV)
The night before the first day of school was an important one in our household growing up. My siblings and I divvied up the bulk school supplies our parents bought, scraping our names into pencils and rearranging folders in our trapper keepers. Once we finished precisely filling our backpacks to the smallest pocket, the final, most important task for the night was to plan the perfect outfit for the next-grade-up debut.
Sometimes our clothes were new. Most times they were just new to us, having been handed down from an older sibling or handed over from a different family. Either way, the excitement was there in spending time in front of full-length mirrors to be sure that when we stepped off the bus and into our new classrooms, we felt as good as our night-before reflections appeared to us.
If these physical clothes of varying values meant so much to us then (and, admittedly, even now I care how I look on my first day of anything), imagine how much more so if we took the time to clothe ourselves with Love. No physical accessories could complete our outfits in the harmonious ways that accessible and affordable Love can!
The approaching school year—even for those of us beyond our school years—makes this a splendid time to go through my literal and metaphorical closets to make sure that how I clothe myself reflects who and whose I know myself to be.
Prayer
We give you thanks for the colorful and sensible and wild and practical and cute and comfortable and edgy and warm and unique and uniform ways you wrap us in your Love. Amen.
