My New Coat

As fall sets in around us and the rain returns in force and fury, as Mount Rainier begins to tuck in under blankets of snow and ice and we all begin to prepare for our long winter, I set out in search of a new coat. My old coat, hanging in the closet, looks as though it would be fine for another season. Sure, I’ve been wearing it now for awhile, quite awhile…it’s comfortable, serves it’s purpose, does what I need it to do when I need it to do it. It protects me from the elements, keeps me warm and dry, it provides me shelter from the “force and fury”. Sounds like a good coat, huh? So you might ask, “Why go thru the trouble of searching if what you have has been working so well?” Believe me when I say, I have asked myself the same question, a lot.

Upon closer examination it turns out my coat has some fundamental flaws, the zipper on the pocket does not zip any longer, the elastic around the wrists is all loose and it has a hole in one of the seams, plus it has no spot for my new iPod and headphones. Turns out my coat, although still functional, isn’t going to work as well as I thought it might.

But why bother? I’m comfortable in my old coat. I know it has some flaws, but that does not keep it from serving its purpose does it? I mean, I don’t really need that zipper to work the coat has other pockets that work just fine. That elastic around the wrists, I can just put a rubber band around it, no one will even notice. I could put on a pair of gloves and just hide it altogether. The rip in the seam…let’s cold air in, but I can duct tape it. They make duct tape now in all sorts of colors and I can find some that matches perfect, plus duct tape fixes anything. That should fix those flaws, right?

So what do you when you find out that what you’ve got isn’t going to meet the need any more? You search for something new, and that is exactly what I am setting out to do. I am looking for a coat without the flaws of my old one. One whose parts and pieces all work the way they were designed to work from the very beginning. One who’s designer and creator knew exactly what I would need and included it in His original design.