Sacred Garments

The last few weeks I have been reading, thinking about the wound that we all share ... the depravity wound. I see it everyday on the news, in the headlines and on the Internet. Just this morning I was listening to reports by reporters who just couldn't understand how smart men and women could do dumb things or why rich individuals would choose to do lead destructive life styles. There is this belief that educated, well off people have the capacity to "be better" than those who are less educated or less well off financially. The truth is that no person is immune when it comes to the depravity wound; that wound which is from our sin nature, which no matter how hard we try, it just doesn't heal on its own. In the Search for Authentic Manhood by Robert Lewis, he talks about this wound and how it can't be overcome by education, money or self effort. It is a wound only God can heal. As I was S.O.A.P.ing up yesterday and today in Exodus 20-30, I came across God instructions to Moses about the priests clothing and how they were to, "Make sacred garments ... to give him dignity and honor." That really caused me stop and think about how you and I are able to go before God because of the sacred garment of Christ's righteousness which gives us dignity and honor. When I think about all that Christ has done to take a life suffering from sin and cloth it with the sacred garment of His righteousness ... it is to his glory. Paul said in Romans 8:10, "But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness." I am alive in Him and as Isaiah wrote ... "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, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." May my life reflect that truth on the sacred journey.