“Momma, am I brave and kind?”
I pulled this shirt out for my daughter to wear the other afternoon. When she saw “Brave and Kind” printed on the front, she hesitated before putting it on. She looked up at me while holding it in her hand, and asked if she reflected the qualities she was about to advertise on her shirt.
After I assured my daughter that she was indeed brave and kind and that it was safe for her to put on a shirt that said so, I began to think of this in a spiritual context. I began to contemplate our tendency to wear “shirts” that say we belong to Christ, but live as if we have no concern about living up to what that should actually look like.
My baby didn’t want to wear that shirt if it wasn’t true. She didn’t want to walk around with something that said she was brave and kind, if she did not live up to those things. It meant something to her to wear a shirt that communicated she was a person of a certain integrity. It meant something to her to be what her shirt said she was.
O Lord, may it mean something to us too.
(Rom 13:13,14) Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.
(1 Pet 4:3) For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.
(Luke 11:39,40) “Now then,” said the Lord, “you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not the One who made the outside make the inside as well?”
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