John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey. Mark 1:6

Since I was a child, I thought of John the Baptist as a pretty strange fellow. The description of him always included the fact that he lived off bugs and what he could find in nature, like honey, and that his dress was not exactly fashionable. He was an oddball, even for those times. But it was this lifestyle of selflessness that made him a better spokesman for God. The prophets were not all strange in their times, but many were. Ezekiel and Haggai were know for doing some very strange things during their tenures. Holy, meaning set apart for spiritual purposes, would be a fair description of the man who pointed the way directly to Jesus.

Jesus talked about John's wardrobe in another passage. Did you expect him to dress in fine linen?

Let's consider that his ministry was one of calling people to repentance and forgiveness. That has been the call of God since Adam and Eve hid in the garden. And believe it or not, even his wardrobe proclaimed that message.

But first let's consider those terms, repentance and forgiveness.

To repent is to turn around. Do a 180. Go back to where you came from. John, like God in the garden calling Adam to come out of hiding, called the people back to a right relationship with Jesus.

What did John wear? The same thing that Adam and Eve wore. Many agree that he actually wore the skin of the animal and not a woven garment, and that would be in keeping with the pictures every Sunday School child brings home. If it was woven, it was itchy and scratchy, more like a burlap sack. It would not have been made from the soft undercoat, for that was for the rich man. If it was woven, it would represent the constant irritation of sin in our lives. It promises some warmth to the body, but irritates the soul. But I rather think that John was covered as Adam and Eve were covered, with the skin of another animal.

Forgiveness of sins...the other message of John.

Something had to die. Sin has to be covered, according to scripture. In this case, a camel skin was the covering. It would only take one animal to cover John and would make the cloak for sleeping under the stars. But it had to be dead for John to use it. And that is how God covered the shame for the first sinners. When God finally got them to quit running away, He covered them at the price of another life. And ultimately with the life of His Son.

Even the leather belt was made from the hide of another animal. It was needed to hold things in place and to keep it with him even in the desert heat of the day. There was no linen, no softness, no comfort in his covering. It was being clothed in the death of another, just as God prescribed in Genesis. It was a foretelling of the ministry that this Jesus he was pointing to would have to provide to cover our sins from the eyes of a Holy God.

John proclaimed Christ crucified in his wardrobe. Humble, uncomfortable, and prophetic. The wardrobe gained him the attention he needed for a time to fulfill the role God had for him on this earth. I wonder how beautiful the robes are he is wearing now.

Wisdom of a Master Workman Proverbs 8:31

Then I was beside Him, as a master workman; and I was daily His delight, Rejoicing always before Him, Rejoicing in the world, His earth, and having my delight in the sons of men. Proverbs 8:31

As I write, thousands of people are gathered in Paducah, Kentucky, for one of the premiere quilt shows in the country. This show is so important to the quilt world that the national quilt museum is located in the city. In it are the winning quilts of that all-important show. The winner is paid $10,000 for their quilt, and the masterpiece is then displayed forever to the world. This year's winner will have the satisfaction of knowing that her masterpiece will be admired for generations to come. Quilting fads may come and go, but these quilts will show the standard of excellence in design and workmanship that come with crafting and award-winning showstopper.

And thus is Wisdom. The verse in Proverbs speaks of God's wisdom in His creative process of making the earth and all that is in it, the people and all that was pleasing to the eye and the soul.

When I think of just the human body, it is a marvel. I am married to a nurse. After 25 years in Medical Intensive Care and 7 in Interventional Radiology, he can regale you with stories of diseases and body parts gone amiss, most of which you never thought about. Who knows about enzymes, germs with names as long as your arms, and syndromes where the chain-effects of cell breakdown can cause illness or death. Whoever designed 2 germ cells to produce millions of different body parts from one fertilized cell had to know what He was doing or the whole thing dies.

And that person can live in the rest of world! He can use plants that are especially designed to nourish the body. Most of them are a delight to the palette if they are good for us, and rejected due to their nastiness if they are poisonous. That is wisdom. The air we breathe, the miracle of water, the covering of skin, the design of reproduction...it all has to be just perfect for life to exist. And it is perfect, thought out perfectly in detail. The need for light and darkness, sleep and rest, exercise and song...it is all a miracle. The beauty of mountains, the pleasure of beaches, the colors of a sunset sky...why do we respond to these things? We are not machines, but feeling, emotional, self-conscious humans.

How can a person like me stand in front of a quilt of utter beauty and design and weep? What does that? (Yes, I did...I cried, the display of this woman's work was so amazingly perfect). Wisdom.

Wisdom delights in beauty. It appreciates the world in its amazingness. It stands next to the creator and designer and praises His work. It stands in awe of the shared creativity that He chose to instill in man. Even if I don't like something like a song the first time I hear it, I can learn to appreciate it most of the time unless it is evil. I can see bits of wisdom in non-perfect things.

The chapter goes on in Proverbs stating that the wise love life, and the wicked, death. Wisdom sees the things of the earth in these two realities. We are builders or tearers-down. We care for our bodies or we abuse them with destructive things like drugs. We plant flowers and mow grass, or we throw bricks through windows. We share food and contribute to fund-raisers, or we take to the streets and kill our neighbors. You can tell if a city or a country is wise by what you find there. You can tell a Dutch town in Iowa – it is neat as a pin. It is expected to stay that way. There is a pride in beauty and order and respect for one's environment. Then there are the places we see on tv where people burn their own neighborhoods to the ground without though of whose lives and livelihoods they are destroying. Wisdom seeks the good of the neighbor, the good of the community, the betterment of the people and development of security and pleasure in the giving to the world around it.

Love wisdom. Stand alongside God and tell Him daily what I good job He did. He gave me medicine for my infection yesterday. I praised Him for that. The cloud formation from a passing storm – amazing in its color of steel blue – I worshiped. The celebration of the people around me – birthdays, weddings, graduations, and other events that spark in us a joy that comes from completion of a task, the following of God's design for structure and order and peace. It is good to praise Him. There is so much the sons of men have been destroying that it can take us down to the pit. But today we can use wisdom to praise Him even for that, as He has planned even the end of this world and designed an even more glorious place for His own. How wise of Him was that?