Sanctity is Wrapping and Unwrapping
My saintly parents are moving. Someday. In the meantime, they are, like St. Francis of Assisi, increasingly eager to part with virtually everything they own, in the hopes that their children's covetousness will lower their moving costs.
Always happy to oblige, I came home from Thanksgiving with a book I've long ogled on their bookshelf: Sanctity Is a Broken Television Set on a Rainy Day. Published in 1970 by Franciscan Herald Press and written by Tom Sharkey for "wives and mothers everywhere," this nicely illustrated book exemplifies the ordinariness of sanctification--becoming more and more like Christ--in simple acts such as doing the dishes, dealing with telemarketers, entertaining guests, making mistakes and caring for loved ones. You can read it in about five minutes, but why would you want to do a thing like that? Here's a taste:
Sanctity is Knowing
When to Get Mad.
When to Go Home.
When to Say No.
When to Say Maybe.
When to Say Yes.
When to Say Wow!
When to Say Thank You.
When to Say Nothing.
When to Laugh.
When to Cry.
There's more to sanctity than knowing, of course, and most of the book has to do with being, or rather, becoming. But what we come to know is part of how we come to be like Christ. In calling us to sanctification, God calls us to know as well as to be:
Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalm 46:10)
Next week is Christmas day, and between then and now we will each have ample opportunity to be sanctified, I am sure. May we each between now and then find time to be still, and to know increasingly that God is here, and God is good.
Merry Christmas from Strangely Dim!
Posted by Dave Zimmerman
at December 20, 2006 4:21 PM
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