It seemed a good idea at the time. When you have nearly forty children on a school trip and your job is to act 'in loco parentis', there comes with that a certain responsibility to arrive home safely with the same number of little darlings with which you left. This generally is not a problem, yet the ability in being able to count up to forty becomes very useful though rather tiring and monotonous. And of course there are few occasions when it is a major task to recognise pupils, especially on a crowded ferry, when this is a non-uniform trip and other schools may be using the boat for the same purpose. So to ease our concerns, we dressed all our pupils in the only regulation piece of uniform they required - a red cap. It was a busy crossing and by the time I had gathered my bits and pieces together and followed the other staff and children to the lounge above the vehicle decks, everyone was safely gathered in. Except that at least two other school groups had also chosen to wear red caps. Initially this isn't a problem, until the children start to wander around the boat and then you discover that if anyone from another school misbehaves, you are guilty by association or at least by similarities in dress code. And several times I ended up trying to count red heads before realising that they were not members of my flock. We didn't have a school uniform during my primary years so the opportunity to wear the blazer of my grammar school was a bonus. The boarders however, had a different, plain grey jacket and when you had represented a sports team at senior level you had the privilege of wearing a colours blazer. Then for some reason, just as I reached the sixth form the headmaster decided that school uniform was no longer compulsory for our year and we were allowed to wear our own clothes, the only stipulation being that we donned a jacket of some description. It seemed a pretty daft idea to be honest because there is something about uniform which helps to identify you with a school or organisation and does create a degree of discipline in your life. Also, for parents it can be a nightmare trying to provide a standard of dress that doesn't look out of place, but I guess maybe the school's idea was to prepare us as young men for what lay ahead when we would eventually be out of uniform, though I don't think it was much help in character building. But hey, here's the strange thing. Even though we are talking over thirty years ago, I can vividly remember the jackets that many of my classmates wore and when I think of them today, for many, that is my last memory of them. SO maybe it was some kind of uniform after all.
I guess most of us have worn a uniform at some time in our life, either at school, maybe as part of a youth organisation or even in the job we do now. During any single day at school, I might encounter a policeman, a minister, a school crossing patrol man, a cook, a school cleaner, a caretaker, a salesman, a sports coach, a painter, a groundsman, a bus driver, a pupil or the school nurse and everyone is easily identifiable by their uniform. But in truth, wearing the uniform doesn't mean you are what you portray to be and that's what gets me really worried, when we start to think about the kingdom. I go to a church where the dress code is less than rigid, in fact it is better classed as informal and I think many folks appreciate that they are accepted for whom they are than what they wear, basing their decision on what God said to Samuel when he was choosing a King for Israel, 'Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.' And while it can be used as an excuse for untidiness and totally improper dress, generally I think people use their common sense in this area. You see, you can wear the traditional church uniform of a Sunday suit, or Sunday outfit, the choir robes, even the minister's robes and collar but it doesn't mean you belong to God. Jesus had plenty to tell the Pharisees about this when he said 'Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.' So it's not what other people see when they look at us, it's what God knows when he sees beyond our coverings and into the heart. I guess uniform doesn't tell the full story!
