When Fashion was King

7.1.2010

Isaiah 3.22c "...and the handbags..." ESV

Perhaps it’s because I spent so many years in department stores that I have an appreciation of the word, handbags. In that industry (if you can call it that) we sold handbags, not purses. I think the word ‘purses’ is a fashion faux pas. Most all of the women I know today would tell you they carry a purse and scant few would use the term, handbag. So what, pray tell, does this have to do with us, Paul? I’m glad you asked.

As I began to read Isaiah’s prophecy today I noticed right off the bat that his language was very accusational. I’m not sure we’d like Isaiah preaching to us nowadays, he seemed to be so negative. We do have to remember however that Isaiah was representing God and speaking what God told him to say to the nations of Israel, and Judah. (The sad irony is that the two were supposed to be one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all…)

But they had abondoned all that business about loving God and loving people and decided that life was more like a fashion show and that Gucci, Pucci, and Yves St. Laurent, and Dooney and Bourke, were more important than anything else. Life to them had boiled down to what one looked like, not what one was… They would’ve loved Sex and the City; they lived it.

When my relationship with God becomes more about me and less about Him it becomes no relationship at all and that’s what Isaiah was criticizing his people for – they’d left God out of the picture and had embraced the gods of affluence and leisure. As a result they became a nation of haves and have-nots that cared little about their souls and very little about the foundations of who they were before God – a nation of humbly righteous people who loved and obeyed God and took care of each other.

Sound familiar? It should, it’s us.

Father in Heaven,

You never called Your people to get hung up on the goods of this world but to live good lives. Maybe today, by Your grace and presence, I could live a little more like the believer You’ve allowed me to be and see my life as more than what I can get with my employee discount. Draw me close to You Lord and help me to keep my pursuits anchored in the realm of righteousness and good works – I pray in Jesus’ Name, amen.