Only 45 Shopping Days until the "Rapture"!

Okay folks, it's getting serious. There are only 45 shopping days until May 21, so you need to get right over to K-Mart and get your "rapture" duds on.

Of course, it is easier said than done. First of all,the question arises, "What does one wear to a good ole' Rapture?" I mean, it's not like we've had enough of these to develop a protocol. Well, we've had plenty of false alarms, so unless we're thinking that their attire was some sort of bad karma that resulted in the "rapture" not happening when people expected it to, we could look at previous "rapture" dates for our sartorial indicators.

For example, back when William Miller began proclaiming with certainty that the Lord would return in 1843 (and then fell back to a revised date of 1844 - See the April 4th blog on math!), the "Millerites" readied themselves for the "rapture" by dressing in white robes. (Some of them took to sitting on their rooftops also, but that seems to be the "rapture" equivalent of pushing and shoving to get to the front of the lunch line to me.) Needless to say, either the Millerites were wrong on both occasions, or else the Lord "raptured" so few people that nobody even noticed that it had taken place.

At any rate, white robes seem to be the preferred dress for saints that are 'ready to go.' Maybe dressing like a first-century Palestinian is akin to being heavenly in some way. I don't know.

A twist on the white robe option could be to dip those robes in blood. I know that sounds a bit gruesome, but there's both biblical and musical precedent for it. Biblically, Joseph's brothers used goat's blood to decorate his robe, which started a fashion in the Ancient Near East that almost nobody talks about any more. And, musically, I love the song "Wayfaring Stranger" that looks forward to the promise of being in concert with the "bloody washed band." (If I ever start a rock group, I'm naming it "Bloody Washed Band.")

Or, we could just shed our clothes altogether on May 21 and go 'commando' like all of the pictures of the "rapture" seem to imply. I'll speak more about this option next time.

For now, I think white robes are our best bets and my suspicion is that the K-Mart near me doesn't even carry them. We might have to order them online from L.L.Bean, or something like that. We could steal some from a local church choir room, but then we wouldn't get to go in the "rapture."

See how important it is to start our shopping now? You don't want to be ill-dressed when May 21 gets here.