Sunday Best

Do you ever walk into a church and have random people look at you like you have just destroyed their whole belief system by your very presence? The look that makes you wonder if you have something on your face? Shirt? In your hair? Then at the next bathroom you see, you dash in to find that you look like you always do? Over-worked, under-paid, and rushed.

I never can figure these people out.

Is it the fact that I come to choir practice straight from work? Usually with something the girls have spilled on my pants? Could it be the fact that I wear tennis shoes or flops instead of heals or slides? Maybe its my tattoos. I think it might be that I haven't brushed my hair for the last 11 hours, but a two year old has! And boy can you tell.

A very dear person to me was talking about how we should present ourselves at church recently and I thought I mostly agreed with him. He said that we should take our appearance at church very seriously because, after all, we are going to the throne of a King. We should polish our faces, put on nice pants, wear suit jackets, and make sure we're more than presentable. We should make sure we're flawless to show respect for our Maker.

I thought I agreed, but tonight, I've changed my mind.

My church growing up used to sing this hymn at invitation "Come just as you are"...what the heck happened to that idea?

I happen to think its a great idea and its just what God wants from us. I doubt very seriously He sees how we're dressed when we come. The Lord Himself said in 1 Samuel 16:7 "Don't judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." Pretty great right?

I love that I can come to church at the end of a very long day when the girls have been up since four and at their winiest and just rest in the fact that my Savior doesn't see what I'm wearing or what my hair looks like or what those spots all over my jeans are. He sees me. He sees my heart. He sees my desire to lift my voice up in praise to His name, the only name worth singing.

I'm not at that church for people who see my outward appearance. I'm there to worship my Savior. And I'm going to be doing it anyway I please, whether it be in hole-y jeans and a spit-up stained shirt or in my Sunday finest.

So you there, lady, you can keep giving me the stink eye every time I show up on Wednesday night looking a little on the trashy side. I may "just" be a nanny, but I work hard! Right up until 6 o'clock every night. So those stains on my pants prove that I'm really getting down into the lives of those two little ones and loving on them fiercely. Those tennis shoes are on to help me walk those girls the mile it takes to get to the park. My hair is little windblown from that walk, but I don't have time to brush it out because twins don't usually let you have those types of luxuries. And those tattoos prove that I've been somewhere...I have a story to tell if only you'd listen. And man is it an incredible story of how God rescued me straight from the hand of the devil! Maybe you'll get to hear it sometime.

And maybe I'll have more tattoos by then.