A gift

A couple of weeks ago, one of the wonderful ladies at our church offered to buy BJ a clerical robe. For those of you unfamiliar with these robes, it is a huge deal to get one. Most ministers are given one by the church they grew up in when they are first ordained, and these robes are pretty much used for the rest of one's career. For the next thirty something years, BJ will look like this on Sunday mornings.


Seeing BJ in the robe means so much to me. For one thing, it represents the generosity and kindness of the people at our church. It reminds me that they have taken us in as more than just an employee, but as a treasured member of their family. It is also an outside symbol of what BJ has been constantly being formed into for the past five years of our marriage: a man of God's ministry. Of course, he is that without the robe, but the robe, in all of it's old-world quirkiness, reminds us that this is a calling different from any other God gives, and that it is to be taken seriously by the one who is called and those who support him or her. Perhaps I'm reading a bit much into a robe, but I am very glad BJ was bless with this gift.