Clothed In Strength And Beauty

¹“Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.” (Isaiah 52:1). There's a kind of self imposed challenge in video games that experienced players sometimes attempt called a naked or a no gear run. The idea is that the players start the game with their default setting and face all of the challenges and defeat all of the monsters and bosses without ever utilizing any of the armor or weapons or other equipment that might help them succeed. I feel like sometimes in our lives we are attempting to do this. It is not wrong for us to want to stand on our own two feet and face what life has to throw at us without running to others for help. Nor is it wrong for us to build up our strength or develop our talents and skills and abilities and to gain some measure of independence. But we don't have to do this all alone. When Adam and Eve found themselves naked in the garden of Eden, they tried to fix things on their own. It sort of worked. Fig leaves might not be the best clothing material in the world but it kind of covered them up. It might not have been very durable or very pretty, but they were doing their best with the limited materials they had to work with. But God offered them another choice. An animal was sacrificed, perhaps even a lamb, so that Adam and Eve could be clothed in coats of skin. Likewise, for us, the lamb of God was sacrificed, so that we too could be covered. To cover is actually the literal translation of the Hebrew word for Atonement. We have a choice. We can try our self imposed challenge to run through life naked and exposed, relying only on our own strength and will and judgement and likely failing miserably most of the time and surely suffering greatly as the fiery darts of the adversary find easy targets in our unprotected flesh. Or, we can gratefully put on the strength and the beautiful covering of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and allow Him to help us through all of life's challenges. I know that so often we allow ourselves to get distracted and deceived and cast off the protection of the Atonement, but every time we do so we find that weakness and ugliness descend upon us faster than we could have imagined. But the amazing thing is that no matter how often we cast aside Christ and His Atonement, He is always right there and waiting for us to repent and return to Him so that He may cover us once more in His power and glory. Strength and beauty can and do come from within, but when we need a little or a lot of extra help, we can put on the strength and the beautiful garments of Christ's Atonement and have a much more successful run.