Love Those Feed Sack Dresses !

If the telephone rang our #69 (yes , I still remember the number) and it was my Uncle on the other end, I got excited .

"Mother, come quick! Hurry! It's for you!".

My uncle owned a feed store just off the square. When he called I knew it meant that I would have some new dresses very soon.

"I got some feed in today and some of the sacks it's in are real purdy. If you'd like to walk over here and pick some out, I'll take 'em home with me to feed and save the sacks," he would tell Mother. If Mother didn't have something on the stove or a pie in the oven, we would walk over to view the stacks of feed sacks in the back room immediately.

What an exciting time that was! I always marveled at the variety of prints. I loved the ones with the little flowers or sometimes there would be little people prints. Some of the material was light; some was darker. Mother always liked the darker prints,

"This would be nice, Honey, because it won't show dirt."

So, after much looking, debating and deciding, we would point out three or four we liked and my Uncle would pull out the feed sacks and place them to one side.

"I'll get these emptied up soon as I can get 'em home", he assured us, "then when I come back into town, I'll drop 'em off to ya 'er your Daddy can pick 'em up when he's out at our place."

I could hardly wait until we had those feed sacks home. Mother would wash them in our old wringer washer and hang them on the line before she ever cut out my dress. I can remember walking out to the clothes line, looking at all of those sacks and my imagination would run wild. I would look at the colors and then run in to mother's button box to see if there were buttons to match. Then, in my mind, I'd sew up the new dress and wear it to town for all to see.

Today, if there is a tag in my collar that touches my skin, I don't like it. It scratches me and I want to get rid of it. But, years ago when I would put on that new dress my mother made, even though it was scratchy because it seemed you could never quite get the little grains of feed all washed out, I would wear it with pride. Some other of my friends had store bought dresses but I never thought they were as pretty as my little feed sack dresses.

How will we be clothed when Christ returns? Some people are clothed in their Sunday best for church but the rest of the week, they may be wearing feed sack clothing as it were.

I'm reminded of one of the verses of the old song, "The Solid Rock".

"When He shall come with trumpet sound
Oh, may I then in Him be found
Clothed in His righteousness alone
Faultless to stand before the throne"

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be found dressed in feed sacks as much as I loved them when I was little. I want to be found dressed in His righteousness and ready for the sound of His trumpet when He returns.

"I delight greatly in the Lord;
my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." Isaiah 61:10