Put Them Off

But now you must put them all off: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Colossians 3:8
There is a legendary story in my family, and if I have anything to do with it (hint: I DO), it will become ever more legendary as time goes on. It goes back to the olden days, when my first born child - let’s call her “Gary" to protect her anonymity - was only about a month and a half old. At the time, we were living in Fort Worth, and I had just changed jobs so I had no vacation time. We were desperate to take our newborn “home” to show her off to the grandparents and siblings, so, being young enough to physically pull this off, we pulled an all-nighter.
I worked all that day, got home about 5 pm, showered, loaded the car, and set off for Grandma’s house, about a 13 hour drive. Oh, and there was a record-setting cold snap that year that left all the gas-station restrooms (and not a few restaurants) frozen solid, making pit-stops a bit difficult. Mississippi and Louisiana are still not ready for single digit temperatures, and I doubt they ever will be.
Anyway, around about 3 am, I began to notice evidence that a diaper change was in order. You know the signs: eyes begin to water uncontrollably, the hairs in your nostrils spontaneously combust, oxygen masks drop from the ceiling. When we finally got to an exit, she was practically swimming - quite happily - in her, um, car seat. Immediately, with all hands on deck, we assaulted the problem using every baby wipe in the known world and brought peace back to our olfactory nerves, and dryness to the back seat.
The only problem remaining was what to do with her clothes.
We hemmed and hawed about it for a little while, but there was only one answer: rinse them out in a gas station bath room and put them back on her.
Ha! Only kidding! They went in to the next dumpster we found, and we never looked back. How ridiculous that would have been, knowing what those clothes had been through, reliving that desperate hour every time we put them on our precious little poop monster. It was no hardship at all to “put them off".
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Colossians 3:9-10
All that sin and iniquity that you were swimming in Before Christ is at least as offensive to God as that 3 am emergency was to me. You would never consider leaving a baby in such filth, why would you do that to your spiritual self? Put off that old stuff, put on Christ’s new stuff, and leave the stench behind!