Isaiah 61:10a - "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation."
I remember a time at church when our nursery staff supervisor was telling me how one of our mature youth was ushering for worship. This youth came back to the nursery at the appointed worship time to have the small children come into worship for a blessing. As it turned out, there was only one small child to bring into worship. However, that little one had experienced a "blowout" so they only had on a diaper but no outer clothes. The youth usher wasn't sure how to carry this basically unclothed little one into worship, so he held the child with two hands but at arms length with his face turned away as if he was carrying a stinking diaper to the trash. Picturing what the nursery supervisor described, I started laughing.
And thinking.
At first, I thought of the sign posted outside a church nursery from 1 Corinthians 15:51, "Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." Get it? Nursery. Small kids. They won't all sleep. But they'll all need a diaper change. Of course, the Bible verse is talking about the Resurrection when Jesus comes again instead of a church nursery. But it made me chuckle.
But as I thought some more about the picture of the youth usher carrying the diapered-only little one, I thought of today's verse from Isaiah 61:10a, "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation."
In sum, friends, God will never leave you in the lurch, which means that God will never leave you abandoned in a difficult position without help. He'll always make sure you're "covered." He'll make sure you have the most important covering, namely, "the garments of salvation."
So, when you find yourself in a precarious position today or anywhere in the future, maybe you could first chuckle, thinking of a church youth usher holding a diapered-only baby at arms length as if the babe were a stinkin' diaper. And then you can rejoice, turning your heart to God's promise that he'll never leave you in the lurch, making sure that you (and all little ones and all who believe) are covered.
Yaaaaaay!
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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