Back to School 
Pause
For lots of students, going back to school means trying on new or hand-me-down clothes, finding shoes that fit growing feet, or getting that required uniform for the dance or sports team.
In addition to the outfit you put on this morning, consider what it might look like to “put on” something else today — to clothe yourself with Christ.
Listen
Therefore, as God’s choice, holy and loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
Colossians 3:12
Think
You know how getting dressed in your football uniform gets you hyped for the game? Or putting on a classy outfit for your big presentation bolsters your confidence? The clothes we put on can surely express who we are to others, but they also have the power to shape the way we act, feel, and see ourselves.
Duke Divinity School professor Lauren F. Winner explores the biblical image of being clothed in Christ in her book, Wearing God: “If to change clothes can be to change one’s sense of self [… and] one’s way of being in the world; if to clothe yourself in a particular kind of garment is to let that garment shape you into its own shape — then what is it to put on Christ?”
Paul suggests that when we put on the new clothes of Christ — when we engage others with compassion and kindness, when we walk humbly and gently, when we practice patience — we’re not just playing dress-up. No, we’re wearing the characteristics that actually shape us into Christ’s own image.
Meredith Forssman
Pray
Jesus, I want to be shaped into a person who looks more like you. Let me walk around every day dressed in your ways, so that I might start to see myself as you do: a person whom you’ve given a new life of freedom. May it be so! Amen.
Go
You are always in God’s sight pleasing,
always in God’s sight lovely,
always in God’s sight as though you were perfect.
For you are complete in Christ Jesus, and perfect in Christ Jesus.
You stand fully clothed in Christ.
Always.
Based on words by the great 19th-century preacher, Charles Spurgeon
