i admit it. i have a selective few shirts that i still wear actively that i have now had for half my life (or longer.) I was goofing around with my wife a few months ago, while wearing one of these nostalgic, oh-so-comfy shirts and she grabbed me by my arm at the elbow, causing the fabric to just rip open. i was deeply saddened. years of my life spilled out onto the floor as i had flashbacks of where that shirt and i had been together. how many memories had been made, friends met for the first time (one even had the exact same shirt) and so on…like i said, i was deeply saddened.

fortunately my wife is quite the seamstress, and she promptly took my shirt to her operating room, gave it a new kidney, sealed up the hole. now my  mother always told me i was kind of a reverse snob when it comes to clothes. i hate wearing big brand labels on my clothing. if you ever see me in a shirt that has the tommy hillfiger flag emblazoned across the front, or the ecco rhino or anything like that, then i have been mugged and redressed in the process. i enjoy clothes with no labels, no billboards across my chest. i figure that if they’re going to put their logo on my body, they should pay me to wear the shirt.

but i digress…a lot. i loved that shirt, and since it has been repaired, i have worn it on an almost weekly basis. i don’t care that there is a patch job on the elbow. it’s proof that i was alive and doing something, not just sitting around like a lump.

sometimes new and pliable does not mix well with old and stiff. like a shirt on the verge of becoming threadbare, they just can’t take the pressure. in mark chapter 2, Jesus addresses our spiritual lives in the same way. he knows that if we try to take our old, stiff, worn out lives and attempt to make our new life with Him fit and fill in what we had before…things are not going to mesh well, and there will be a blow out.

doing a temporary fix on an old item or trying to re-use it for something new may not work out well, as it will not be able to stand the strain. sewing patches of unshrunk cloth on an old, favorite shirt will turn out bad, because the first time you wash it, the patch will shrink up and cause even more damage. the seams rip and pull, and the whole becomes more jagged and difficult to repair.

Jesus also talks about putting new wine into old wine skins. this is one area where “reduce, reuse, recycle” does not apply. during the fermentation process, there are gasses that are given off, and the wineskin needed to be able to stretch to adapt to this…thus the need for new wine skins. the old ones would have lost their elasticity, and just pop like an overfilled water balloon on a hot summer sidewalk. and then no one is happy…the wine is wasted, and whatever was nearby has no been rendered purple or red.

we cannot take our old lives, our old selves, and try to jam Jesus in the cracks, crevices and odd spot to make Him fit. Jesus offers us a new life, and so we must abandon the old (even if it is a much beloved garment) so that we can be flexible, so that we can stretch beyond what we could before. we cannot expect to hold onto our old lives once we’ve asked Jesus to give us a new one. we cannot do and say all the thing we used to…those things that we not God-honoring will have to go. and odd as it may sound, you’ll want them to change. this doesn’t mean that you can’t talk with or spend time with your old friends, but it does mean that you will need to begin being a good influence on them, rather than them influencing you.

so a new life means a new shirt, a new way of doing things for the new you. in Jesus we can change…we just have to willing to stretch.

Father, please forgive me when i hold onto the old. please help me stretch as i follow You daily.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Spirit, have mercy.

amen.