There is one garment that is so painful it takes our breath away.
When we wear it, tears seep out the side of who we are, our breath is sharp and the pain is acute.
We’ve all known it. Some of us have recognized it. Some of us have not.
It’s painful because we weren’t created to wear it. It is sharp; hard, abrasive, light blocking and heavy,
It’s the heavy garment of rejection. The very word brings tears to my eyes, as it does to the God that made you for full acceptance, for celebration, for community.
Are you wearing it today? Where are you wearing it? Is it on your feet – stopping you from walking into God given appointments? Is it on your hands, stopping your creativity? Is it in your brain, seeping through neural pathways whispering that you are unloved and unlovable. Maybe it’s over your heart, stopping you from loving, or letting anyone in.
I can feel it trying to take over my wardrobe, trying to infect every item of clothing with its touch.
Like a disease, it’s hard to stop its spread, it will take over until you are trapped in darkness, pain and confusion.
We can rip at this garment with positive thinking, the acceptance of another, the acceptance of achievement, performance, good works. But it grows back.
How do we shed this garment? How do we get rid of it once and for all?
There is only one place.
Freedom from rejection has always been and will always be found at the foot of the cross. At that cross that performs the mystery all humanity has cried out for; ‘free me from these garments that are not who I really am.’
And at the cross, He took them. In one violent “Not my will, but yours”, the savior of humanity violently ripped out every thread of rejection that wove its way through the human condition, and cried out to one and all: ACCEPTANCE – the unconditional acceptance by the Father.
And the thread is undone, it unravels in the mystery, wonder and power of the perfect sacrifice. It lays powerless in the ground, and there we are naked, in all our human brokenness before the one whose love accepts us, transforms us, clothes us.
His love and His sacrifice make a new weave, a weave that creates a new garment.
A garment of infinite worth, beauty and delicate wonder.
It’s available for everyone who stands at the foot of the cross and lets the savior of the world rip away rejection. It is His own garment, created and bestowed by the Father. it is the garment of sonship, of daughtership, of belonging, of “you’re mine”.
He calls us daily to Him to wear this garment again and again:
Come daily to my store,
And wear what I once wore,
I’ll take away the threads,
And the thoughts within your head.
For the sting of betrayal,
Won’t ring the final bell.
They forget the great exchange,
And the final rearrange
Where rejection bows its head
To the one who’ll raise the dead
And acceptance is the song
That finishes that which was wrong.
(poem by Kirrily Lowe ©)
Let’s rip off rejection today. You are a daughter of God.
Kirrily Lowe ©
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