This morning, about 4:55am, Dayana and I once again found ourselves on the steps of Burden Hall, waiting for Prayer Group to begin. The weather was crisp and chilly and we clutched our blankets close as a shooting star zoomed overhead. It was beautiful! I opened my Bible to Psalms 92 and began to read about the magnitude and wonders of our God. Then we just sat in "awe" of it all for a few moments...

Then I broke the solemn silence in laughter... "Look at us Dayana! We can't even get our colors to match. We look like Hobos here clutching our blankets!"

And it's true! We did! We both had rolled out of bed at 4:45am and had to work to pry our eyes open. I had put on black sweats and a blue sweatshirt, a black scarf and a brown hat. I'd pulled on soft rainbow blue socks and quickly jumped into cheap white tenni shoes. And now I sat wrapped in a bright green blanket! What more amusing site could I be?? Dayana's attire wasn't much better...And yet, here we were, bowing before the God of the universe, pleading for His Holy Spirit and blessing...

Would we dare to go dressed like this before some earthly magistrate or king?? Would we dare to even go to work dressed like this? Of course not....yet, here we were before the King of the Universe...looking just like Hobos!

After I'd finished laughing about it, I paused to contemplate it all. Whether I was wearing nice clothes or a mismatched rainbow of styles, it didn't really matter to God did it? The most beautiful clothes I could wear, or the greatest deeds of love that I could summon forth, were only but filthy rags anyway....for it says, "We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away..." Isa 64:6.

Yet, I am sooo grateful that the God I serve, takes me, in all my amusing and hopeless styles of filthiness, and holds me close, and says, "Come now and let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow..." Isa 1:18

Amusing as this whole situation was (And I took pictures just to prove it), it reminded me of this quote from steps to Christ.

"Jesus loves to have us come to Him just as we are, sinful, helpless, dependent. We may come with all our weakness, our folly, our sinfulness & fall at his feet in penitence. It is His glory to encircle us in the arms of His love, and to bind up our wounds, to cleanse us from all impurity." pg 52

Wow - what a beautiful personal and loving God we serve!!!