To Wear a Blazer

Me and a few buddies sporting our best "La Tigra" look for cameras in Paris. For more pics check out www.fashionfool.com Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I know nothing about fashion. My sister-in-law, Megan, and my Mom seem to get good laughs out of moments when I claim to be "dressed up." I'm just fine in my comfy Carhartts and Tshirt. I will admit that I like dressing up and feeling a little spiffy once a year, but it feels like I'm a middle school boy dressing up like a rock star or a little girl walking around in her Mom's high heels. I'm blatently aware that I'm not quite me when I'm trying to be a little smooth by dressing up. Last year a good friend, a pastor in fact, let me in on a huge discovery that has changed his life....the blazer. As a few of us waited for him we were a bit surprised when he walked in with jeans, New Balance shoes, a nice Tshirt, and a blazer on. He seemed relaxed, yet dressy. He was more excited to tell me about his blazer than a seventeen year-old girl is to show you her prom dress. He took me aside, thinking that I would really value this as much as he did, and shared with me the joy of a blazer. "You can wear jeans and tennis shoes, yet you look completely permissable, even respectable." His conclusion; he had beated the system of fashion as we knew it. Since that day I've been fascinated by the theology of the blazer. I'm still quite infatuated with the idea of relaxed and respectable dress, in fact, I'm still looking for a sweet khaki blazer if you wouldn't mind keeping an eye out. Everything in me says, "You can't be dressed up with jeans on; it's too comfortable." The blazer principle seems like a pretty ridiculous idea to entertain, but it has come to take on so much more meaning to me. I am living life in a blazer on a daily basis, and it's seems wrong. I am strangely me- relaxed, normal, ordinary, usual- yet I am strangely more than that too- extraordinary, unusual, and inhabilited by somthing that makes me feel so... respectable. The reality is that I am quite ordinary, but my best friend and my biggest influence is an extraordinary God. At times I've tried to play dress up, forgetting my sin and my smallness, but at times I've also felt so grubby as I look down at my jeans and forget that a mighty God has chosen to wrap his arms around me. It feels so wrong, yet it's so right. Although I'd be pretty surprised to be in the next J Crew catalog, I shouldn't be surprised when God chooses to blow me away by the things He can do through me- the regular, ordinary, relaxed dude wearing denim.