It is proverbial that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’   And while no one can deny the power of illustration, a picture without a word of explanation is worthless.  Words have a level of precision in communication that pictures can never attain.  We call pictures, illustrations, for just that reason.  They adorn or clarify words, but never replace them – a fact lost on the author/illustrators of modern instruction manuals.  Words have been replaced with undecipherable instructo-glyphs.  Yet no decoder ring or Rosetta Stone can be found in the packaging.

Pictographic laundry care labels are equally mysterious, especially for men, who already struggle with the basic idea that more than one load is ever needed.  Left to our own devices, all our clothes would be two sizes too small and a dingy, grey shade of pink.  Men are by nature insensible to the significance of laundry care.  But any man who has loved and lived with a woman recognizes the importance of making this important.   You only get one, or maybe two, chances at shrinking your wife’s perfect fitting top before you tempt her to keep a record of wrongs.   So men, take time to learn the laundro-glyphic arts and treat the sorting and laundering of clothes with utmost care.  Because how you care for your wife’s laundry is directly related to your care for your wife.

This principle has an important analog in spiritual life as well.  Intimate relationships require great care and attention.  They cannot be neglected or treated carelessly.  In a very strange passage of scripture in thirteenth chapter of Jeremiah, God compares his people, Israel, to a linen loin cloth.  As is the occupational hazard of biblical prophets, Jeremiah acts out the illustration.  The linen loin cloth is a precious garment.  The prophet is instructed to handle it carefully and not even wash it.  Just as the loin cloth is designed to be worn, clinging intimately to its owner, so God’s people are made to cling to him.  When this intimacy is treated with great care and attention it brings glory to God and joy to man.

But God shows the people the effects of carelessness, apathy, and neglect on this relationship.  He tells the prophet to make the long journey to the Euphrates River.  There he is to bury the linen garment in the cleft of a rock along the riverbank and to leave it for some time.   Placed in a harsh environment and neglected, it predictably spoils.  And as anyone who has owned a linen garment knows, if it suffers neglect and abuse it is impossible to restore.  God’s people had not protected and cared for their intimate relationship with their creator.  They were created for him and him alone.  They were made, perfectly fitted, to cling closely.  But when this intimate fellowship is neglected and abused, how can it be restored?  There is a warning here for us.  We were made to glorify and enjoy our Creator.  We were spoiled beyond hope by sin, yet God’s grace reclaimed us, restored us, and called us to cling to him.  Like Jacob and Peniel, we are not to let go.

But how careful are we to heed these “care instructions?”  Have we become careless and neglectful in the intimate relationship with Christ to which we have been called?  Have we put ourselves in the clefts of other rocks? Or buried ourselves into other pursuits? Or allowed other things to flow in and through us apart from a love for Christ?   How carefully are you heeding the instructions to care for your spiritual life?  Are you more careful with your woolens than your relationship to Christ?

Join us this Sunday, October 27 as we examine this important reminder from Jeremiah 13 to guard and cherish with care our intimate fellowship with God through Christ.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions. Come with a friend and join us for fellowship and worship. We look forward to seeing you there.