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Fashion. The Random House Dictionary defines it as, "a prevailing custom or style of dress, etiquette, etc.," or "conventional usage in dress, manners, etc." With that thought or definition in mind, I give you the late 60's through the 70's. Some of you can remember those years well as you spent them as a blooming adult. Others of you may have been well developed adults watching and wondering when it would all end. While others of you, well, you just read about those years and shake your head.

That time period was the time of bell bottom pants and mini skirts, butterfly bow ties and Madras shirts. It was a time of almost anything goes in fashion where garish was in and tasteful was boring. It was a time when those fifty and over just sat back and shook their heads at what was going on fashion-wise in the world. They stayed with their tried and true fashions and didn't wander into the morass of plaids, paisleys and platform shoes. With one exception.

Charles Richmond, or Charlie as we all knew him, was the preacher at the South Side Church of Christ in Washington Court House, Ohio, during the aforementioned time period. I would guess him to be somewhere in his late forties to early fifties during that time period. To us teens and budding young adults he seemed old as dirt anyway. Everybody ten years or more older did then. But Charlie had a glitch in his wiring. If Charlie's wife didn't help him dress, which was most of the time, he'd get out of the house wearing some rather bold fashion statements.

Charlie would wear plaids and stripes together in such challenging combinations that local drug stores sold out of Dramamine. Charlie once bought a rack of old tuxes that a businesses was getting rid of and then wore a brocade tux with a striped shirt and a paisley butterfly bowtie in which to preach. The topper, or bottomer, was the sandals with socks that completed the ensemble. Charlie knew something about fashion we didn't. He knew that fashion was to make the person wearing it feel good and enjoy themselves. I can't remember too many times, if any, that Charlie wasn't having a blast.

The right clothing, even if it doesn't seem to everyone else like the right clothing, can enhance the way we feel about ourselves. Charlie's clothes made him Charlie. Kind of like the Christian's clothes. Yeah. We have a special wardrobe. "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Galatians 3:26, 27 The people of the world, the self-styled "life fashion police", think wearing Christ is just as garish as plaids and paisleys. Maybe it's time to resurrect some old fashioned style in life.

"Refreshment in Refuge" from Gina Burgess

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