the robe

I wrote this a long time ago. Shame is and has - as long as I can remember - been a very real part of my life. As I remember, this was in the midst of the shame that I wrote this. Special shout out to many of you that have in my life reminded a proud spiritually perfectionistic dude about the reality of grace. I put it on facebook a while back, so some of you may have already read it.


Grace. I see grace as a beautiful robe I have been given. A robe of pure white, pure warmth, pure wonder. I am given this gift and feel as if I will ever enjoy its purity and comfort. Each time I receive it – which is often – I think that Surely, I will honor the grace given me. Never will I go to the places I have been before, for fear of blemishing my priceless prize. I am full with gratitude and my heart beams with pride in the grace I have received. I am Forgiven and given … this is true pleasure. Yet, as I take that robe around, I find that I gradually start to mistreat it once again. I start to get lazy with what I consume, and it isn’t long before careless stains and marks show up on my garment. Then, once dirty, I get less cautious because I am discouraged. I feel the shame of my careless ingratitude. Yet, the shame doesn’t call me to greater care. I have already messed it up and it is so hard to keep clean. Whats the point? I start to go to the places that I have gone before, and my robe begins to drag, rub and splash through the mire of where I love and hate to go all at the same time. I hate the filth of compromise, but I feel like it is impossible to avoid. Something in me tells me that it is who I am, and that I am a fake to ever have something clean, pure and beautiful.

About this time, I awake and see the mess. I really see. I look at the stains, the spills, the tears and the poor patch jobs I have tried to do. I sit their in my dirty robe. Sure, I know what I could do. I could go explain myself, ask forgiveness and be given a brilliant new robe again. It is not very difficult for me to admit my failure, my carelessness, lethargy and subsequent mess. I can explain the dirt on the old one. It is just hard for me to accept the new. Why? Why would I be given a new white perfect robe again? I have a closet full of different robes I have abused in my passion for self. The marks are different. The tears are in different places and have accumulated by different means … but the result is also near the same.

As I stand in the line to receive the new brilliance of grace that can only baffle at its breadth, depth, length and height … I remember my closets of failures. But, my heart is lifted from that for a few moments. In this epiphany … With all my heart, I wish my life would stay in the perspective that I now see. I close my eyes to see this new thought clearer. I close my eyes as if to say that this is all I want to see ever again. I am enlightened again, the story is not about the closet full of painful failures. The story is about the gift. The story is that in spite a mess, Jesus gives me the clean. My closet is so full, but I have heard of others that even have a few more. Others less. Yet, as I stand in line, no one questions the gaurentee of the robe. Why? Is this some Mary Poppins never ending always replentishing freebie mart? I would never consider it something so cheap! Why? Because we all have something in common more than our failures and dirty robes. We all know the gift Giver. We all realize that all our failure is not near as strong as His grace. We all begin to see that His wonder is what this story is about. It is not about the abuse we put on His robes. It is about the grace of robes that He puts on us.
So, I once again gain my perfect robe. And I realize that this story is not about me. This gift is not about me. It is about the one who painfully made it for me through the drops of his blood and the heaving of his breast, the streaks on His back and the holes in His hands. That’s how He made them. And, somehow He still delights to give them out.

Now, the story that started in the discouragement and failure of self yet again ends in the freedom and success of Christ. I leave so full and grateful. I also leave knowing that I will soon forget. I will try with help to keep myself honoring the gift I have been given. Yet, at the same time I know that my abuse will not eradicate His grace.
I know I will come again …