Clothed
IV. Clothed
“And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.”
As the loving Father of his family,
he saw them
poor and wretched,
weak and wounded,
bruised and broken by the fall.
The fig leaves.
The poor sewing.
The helpless sinners
trying to cover shame
with the work of their own hands.
And he did not leave them there.
He came to them
full of pity.
Not disapproving from a distance.
Not handing them better leaves.
But moving toward them in love.
He took
from the flock,
an innocent creature.
A gentle beast.
One Adam may have named.
One life
for another.
And for the first time,
blood touched the ground.
A life taken
so the guilty might be covered.
A substitute in the garden.
A shadow of better blood to come.
A whisper of the Lamb
whose precious blood would plead
to raise the ruined.
He sewed
not a flimsy patch,
not a shabby workaround,
not another human attempt.
He made a garment for the naked.
A covering for the ashamed.
Something sufficient
for the long road ahead—
for bitter toil,
for incredible pain,
for thorns and sweat,
for tears and graves,
for life east of Eden.
He clothed them
for the world their sin had made.
And yet,
this act of grace was provisional.
The curses remained.
The garden was still lost.
Clothed,
but still broken.
