Thirty One Robes, Already Hemmed

Paulette only came by to drop off the roasting pan.

It was Sister Verna's pan, borrowed for a repast four Sundays back, and Paulette had washed it twice and left it by her own front door for a month because returning it meant going in the building. She picked a Tuesday afternoon on purpose. Tuesday afternoon meant nobody.

Except the choir room door was propped open with a hymnal, and Sister Verna was in there with a box cutter and a rolling rack, and thirty-one new robes were hanging on it in a row with the plastic still on.

"Set it in the kitchen, baby," Verna said, not looking up. "And come see these while you here. They finally came."

Paulette set the pan down and came back and looked at them. Deep blue, the good weight, better than the old ones. Every hanger had a strip of masking tape on the neck with a name written on it in black marker, in Verna's handwriting, which slanted uphill the way it always had.

She walked down the row reading names the way you read names, not looking for anything. Fourth from the end, the tape said Paulette.

She stood there. Two years since she had quit. Two years of what she had told everybody was a break, which was actually a project, which was actually a list: get the tone steady again, get the breathing right, get the nerve back, get herself into some kind of shape that a room full of people could stand to hear before she asked anybody to listen to her again. She had not gotten through item one.

She lifted the plastic. The hem had been taken up. Two full inches, because she was five foot one and had needed it taken up every time since she was seventeen.

"Verna," she said. "When did you order these?"

"March," said Verna, still with the box cutter.

Maybe you have a list like that. Maybe there is one thing about yourself you decided you had to get handled before you had any business standing with God's people, and the handling has taken years, and you are not through item one either. You are inside a people God Himself is preparing, and the preparing has been going on this whole time without waiting for your list. That is what Scripture says about the church, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the work in her, which is exactly why the work has not stopped while you were out of the room.

Read the verbs, and notice whose they are

There is a sentence in Ephesians that gets quoted at people constantly and read carefully almost never. Paul is teaching husbands how to love their wives, and to do it he points past marriage at something far bigger: what Christ has done and is doing for the whole assembly of His people.

Say the corporate part plainly, because this is the passage where readers get turned around most often. The church in that sentence is a company. A congregation, an assembly, a whole people gathered from every place and century. It is not a private romance between Jesus and one person's inner life, it is not about anybody's feelings, and it has nothing to do with whether you are married. It is a public statement about what Christ is doing with a body of people, and you are one of the people in the body.

You are inside that company, and the care being spent on it is being spent on you right now. The word says He is at work on her, and the Holy Spirit is the One doing the working, which means the labor was never yours to carry alone.

That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.Ephesians 5:27

Now go through it and mark the verbs. He might present. He cleanses. He sanctifies. Every single active verb in that passage belongs to Christ, and not one of them belongs to the church. The church is the object of the sentence from beginning to end.

You have a readiness that was given to a whole people, and it is already being worked into you rather than waiting on you to start. That is what the word says, and it is the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead who is doing the working.

I want you to notice one more thing. Paul says without spot or wrinkle. Wrinkle is a cloth word. It is what a garment does when it has been folded up in a drawer too long, and it is fixed by somebody else with heat and patience and time, and it is never fixed by the cloth trying harder.

Nobody hems a robe for a person they have written off

There is a shoebox in that choir room with measurement cards in it, and Verna has never thrown one away, and that is the part of the story I want you to sit with.

Because a hem is not an invitation. An invitation is cheap; anybody can say come back sometime. A hem is two inches of somebody's Tuesday, spent on a person who has not been in the building for two years, before that person has done anything at all to deserve the trouble.

That is the shape of what God has done. He did not leave a message. He did the alterations. Scripture says He gave Himself for the church and He is the one making her ready, and the readiness was cut to fit a people who were nowhere near the room when the work began.

You are being prepared by God Himself, and the preparing started long before you noticed it and did not pause when you left. His word puts the whole project in His hands, and the Holy Spirit is the seamstress on it, working while you were out.