I poured a cup of water over my head in the 93-degree heat after sweating out two sets of tennis. Dripping, stinky and exhausted, I checked my phone messages.
Oh, no! It was the rehab clinic where I worked as a hand therapist. “Urgent patient scheduled for 11:00 a.m. today.”
What? It was my day off! And it was 10:45.
“I can’t work today,” I sputtered into the phone. “I’m not in work clothes …”
“Just come as you are,” the secretary responded. “Nobody will notice.”
Right. I surveyed my sweat-soaked tennis togs. I couldn’t have looked less like a medical professional. Or smelled like it. I doused my nasty self with body spray but only succeeded in reeking like a high school girls’ locker room.
But off to work I go. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho.
Naturally, none of the other therapists had an extra lab coat to camouflage my inappropriateness. When I called the patient from the waiting room, he eyed me warily.
“I … um … thought we were doing Halloween early,” I said lamely. It was August. “I’m supposed to be Serena Williams. At Wimbledon.”
The invitation to “come as you are” can be risky. No telling what disgusting messiness you might find if people take you up on it.
Yet, the Almighty extends that very invitation to each of us when He calls us to Himself.
Come as you are … with your ugly attitudes, stinky sinfulness, slimy pride, pathetic helplessness. Come on, dear child, and I’ll clean you up and make you fresh as new-fallen snow.
No matter how filthy you started, you’ll end up beautiful. Have you accepted His awesome invitation yet?
“He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,” (Titus 3:5, NIV).
