They Call Him the Streak

But he left his garment in her hand, and fled and ran outside. - Genesis 39.12

As a kid catching lizards in my backyard, I learned the hard way that those wily reptiles have detachable tails. The fish-scale gecko of northern Madagascar goes that trick one better: It shucks its entire scaly skin and slithers to freedom. Predators clutch at a miniature Godzilla only to wind up with a mouthful of cellophane while their plump prey scampers pinkly into hiding. The gecko regrows its outer crust in a matter of weeks and goes on about its business with no ill effects.

If, as Falstaff claims in Shakespeare's Henry IV, "the better part of valor is discretion," perhaps it is also true that sometimes vulnerability is the best defense. Sometimes we need to leave without taking account of what we leave behind.

Joseph fled with his wardrobe diminished but his integrity in tact. As a swarthy-skinned member of a minority race he couldn't dodge hard time after a trumped-up trial, but he clothed himself in honor all the same. Lot's wife left Sodom but lingered for a longing look; her desire to hang on left her with a fatal sodium count. David shed Saul's armor because he fought better unencumbered by all that kingly bling. Elisha's servant Gehazi traded the truth for two new suits that must've made him the best-dressed denizen of the local leper colony. The unidentified youngster in the Garden of Gethsemane wound up minus a bed sheet but fled in his own whole hide. Paul left his cloak in Troas but arrived in Rome with an unsoiled soul.

"Naked I came from my mother's womb," observes Job, "and naked I shall return." Jesus points out that God lavishes red carpet-level tailoring on weeds and wildflowers that outstrip Solomon's sartorial splendor. What superficial scales leave handholds for sin as we scamper through life? "The secret to survival," says Kenny Rogers' famous gambler, "is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep." May God grant us grace today to be loving losers of the Lord who will one day clothe us in the white garments of his own eternal righteousness, which no man can take from us.