I Take The Shirt Off In The Car

You have a routine now and you did not decide to have it.

You come out at the end, you get in, you shut the door, and before you turn the key you take the shirt off and put a different one on. Then you drive home.

You do it in the parking lot, in a car, which is not comfortable and is not private, and you do it anyway.

The first time was practical. There was a stain, or you were meeting somebody, or it was hot. There was a reason, and the reason was ordinary.

The second time there was no reason and you did it anyway.

That was, what, eleven months ago? Fourteen? You cannot place it, which is the part that unsettles you, because you are a person who can normally place things.

And now it is simply what happens. You would feel strange driving home in it. If somebody asked you why, you would say something about comfort, and you would know while you were saying it that comfort is not it.

Here is what I think it is, and you can throw it out if it does not fit.

You are not ashamed of the work. You have never been ashamed of the work. You are good at it, and you know you are good at it, and on a decent day you enjoy it.

What has happened is that the shirt has stopped being clothing and started being a claim. It says a word on it, and the word is not yours, and somewhere in the last year your body decided it did not want to carry that word into your own driveway.

That is not a small thing and it is not a silly thing. It is a real spiritual event and nobody ever wrote to it.

So let me write to it.

Whatsoever ye do

There is a sentence in Corinthians that gets read at people so often it has gone numb, and it is worth waking up.

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31, King James Version)

Notice what is not in that sentence. There is no list of qualifying activities. There is no clause about whose name is on the arrangement. There is no exemption for work done under somebody else's system.

Whatsoever. It is a deliberately enormous word, and Paul chose it on purpose.

You have been doing your work unto God this entire time, and 1 Corinthians 10:31 does not check whose name is on the front before it applies. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes an ordinary shift and files it where it actually belongs, and He has been doing that for eleven months without telling you.

Which means the shirt has been carrying two things and you only knew about one.

It carries a word somebody else owns. It also carries the whole of what you did on Tuesday, which was done, whether you framed it this way or not, to the glory of God.

You were never wearing only their word, and Scripture puts the glory of God on whatsoever you do rather than on whatever it is called. The Spirit of God is the one who assigns the meaning of a working day, and it is written in 1 Corinthians 10 that He does it on the doing rather than on the signage.

That is the reframe, and it is not a trick of the mind. It is a fact about ownership.

They own the word. God owns the work. Those are two different possessions and they have been sharing a shirt.

You have been carrying something of God's home every night without knowing it, and the written word settles that ownership in 1 Corinthians 10. The Holy Spirit is the one who has been in the car for the whole of that routine, and He has never once thought less of you for it.

What the changing is really doing

Now I want to be careful, because I am not about to tell you the routine is a sin. It is not.

But it is doing something, and it is worth naming.

Every evening, in a parking lot, you perform a small separation. You divide the day from the life. The woman in the shirt stays at work, and a different woman drives home, and the two of them do not speak much.

Do that for fourteen months and something quietly follows. The work becomes a thing that happens to you rather than a thing you do. And a person who is having work happen to them gets tired in a way that sleep does not touch.

You are one person, and the written word has never divided a life into a part that counts and a part that gets changed out of in a car. It is written that whatsoever you do is done to the glory of God, and the Holy Spirit does not go off duty at the end of a shift.

There is one more thing under it, and it is the tender one.

Part of the changing is protection. Anybody who has been in this a while has watched what the arrangement does to people. There are operators who became the word on the front, who could not talk about anything else at a table, whose whole selves got eaten by a system they did not write.

You are not going to be that, and the shirt in the car is your line.

You have a fear here that is wise rather than foolish, and Scripture does not scold a person for guarding what is theirs. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a soul separate from a system without making a person split in two, and 1 Corinthians 10 is where that word stands.

The line is right. The place you put it may be wrong.

Moving the line

The line does not belong on your body. It belongs on your allegiance.

Wearing the shirt home does not hand them one extra thing. They already have what they have, and it is written on paper somewhere, and it is not increased by fabric.

What changing in the car does is teach you, every single evening, that the day you just gave was something to be shed. It is a small nightly sermon and you have been preaching it to yourself since last spring.

You are permitted to carry the whole day home with you, and 1 Corinthians 10:31 already put God's own glory on it before you got to the car. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a drive home into a thing done unto Him rather than a decontamination.

So here is the experiment. Not forever. Once.

You have nothing at all to prove by this, and it is written that the doing is what carries the glory rather than the getting it right. The Spirit of God is not running an inspection on a woman in a parking lot, and He never was.

Tomorrow morning, put it on at home. Not in the car. At home, before you leave, on purpose, the way you would put on anything else. And drive in wearing it.