Real Clothing
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment” [Matthew 22:11]
Man is different from every other creature in regard to clothing. All of God’s other creatures were “born with their clothes on,” so to speak. Shrimp and snakes slough off their old clothes and grow new ones. Some animals even shed their old clothes periodically and develop new ones. Man is the only creature whose clothes must come from the outside.
Most of us have never felt much of a debt of gratitude for our clothing, but some people owe their lives to what they were wearing! For instance, in order to survive the extreme temperatures and vacuum of space, astronauts need special spacesuits. These suits supply them with oxygen, maintain pressure, monitor their blood pressure and heart rhythm, and keep their bodies at controlled temperatures. Without the Earth’s atmosphere to filter the sunlight, the side of the suit facing the Sun may be heated to a temperature as high as 248 degrees F; the other side, exposed to darkness of deep space, may get as cold as minus 160 degrees F. Paradoxically, the suit’s life-support system has to remove the heat and sweaty moisture generated by the working astronaut. This is usually accomplished by circulating cool water through an undergarment worn next to the astronaut’s skin.
When Neil Armstrong went on the historic Apollo 11 mission as the first man to land on the moon, his suit was specially designed to provide a life-sustaining environment with relative comfort for up to 115 hours outside the spacecraft, or for 14 days in an unpressurized mode. Astronauts must put an enormous amount of trust in their spacesuits. One described the eerie feeling he got after realizing that while outside the space capsule, there was just one-quarter of an inch of material between him and eternity. Now that’s important clothing!
Jesus once told a story about a king who provided wedding garments for all his guests. When he walked through the banquet hall he was surprised to find one person without the special clothing he provided. “So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless” (Matthew 22:12). When Jesus comes back to our Earth, will you be ready to make a trip to heaven because you have on the special garment of His righteousness?
