Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Colossians 3:12 (NIV)
The Name Before the List
The shop keeps its capes folded on a shelf behind the chair. Each one goes on over whatever a man walked in wearing, and comes off again with his hair on it.
The people who first heard this letter read to them were being told to get dressed. Before this instruction arrives, they are called God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved. All of it was already true of them, said over men and women sitting there in whatever they had on. Then come the clothes: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Patience comes last on that list, and it has a name attached to it. The next thing they are told is to bear with each other and to forgive anybody who has given them a grievance. So it is aimed at a particular person, somebody who will be at the same table next Sunday, who did the thing, who has not apologized, and who may never get around to it.
The last chair of the day goes to an electrician who has been in a crawl space since one o’clock. He drops into the chair with the whole day still on him, insulation fiber in the creases of his neck, and the barber shakes out the cape and settles it over the work shirt and snaps it shut at the back.
He knows what that costs on a job. There is always a man who capped a line wrong years ago and left it inside a wall for whoever came next, and tomorrow he will be back under the same house doing the work anyway. The wire does not care who was careless.
None of the five is how a person gets to be chosen and holy and dearly loved. That was said over them while they were still in the old clothes, and it is the reason the list can be handed to them as clothing rather than as a test.
You find out how it went from the people who had to be near you while you were wearing it. When the cut was done the barber turned the chair, brushed the back of his neck, and picked up the small mirror on the handle.
A Prayer to Remember
Give me one more turn with the person I have already forgiven twice and will have to forgive again this week. Let me be unremarkable about it. Let there be nothing in my face that makes them pay for it later. They are probably never going to say it. Walk in with me.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
