Skip to main content

Knowing More Fully...

Even as we are more fully known.

Sister Joan Chittister says, "We don't change as we get older - we just get to be more of what we've always been." (The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully)

This is the definition of sanctification for me. We are children of God, simultaneously saint and sinner, but we are not yet what we have been made to be in fullness. 

The on-going work of the Spirit within pulls, pushes, and propels us to being more fully the child (children) of God for the time and place and hope and future for which we were created. 

When there is great turmoil and fear in the world, like now, I can easily feel detached from many things. Yet, because I believe God is still working - even and especially in me- I believe that nothing is settled. History is within God, thus no other forces will even be footnoted in the final telling. 

Every glimpse of pain or horror in the world is also a chance to perceive one's own sanctification, to respond with Christlikeness and holy hope and to glimpse within one's own heart what has always been true about the self and what is becoming more true through the power of God. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Julia, how right you are and thank goodness that we are in God's hands. Knowing that despite recent events He is still who He has always been, always will be and we will always be his children, being sheltered under the shadow of his wing. :) Visiting from NaBloPoMo in November '15. Linda

Popular posts from this blog

Religious Holidays in Anchorage

You may have read in the Anchorage Daily News about a new policy regarding certain religious holidays and the scheduling of school activities. If not, a link to the article is here . The new rules do not mean that school will be out on these new holiday inclusions, but that the Anchorage School District will avoid scheduling activities, like sporting events, on these days. The new list includes Passover, Rosh Hashanah , Yom Kippur , Eid al - Fitr and Eid al - Adha . They are added to a list which includes New Year's, Orthodox Christmas and Easter, Good Friday, Easter, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. The new holidays may be unfamiliar to some: Passover is a Jewish celebration, in the springtime, that commemorates the events in Egypt that led up to the Exodus. The name of the holiday comes specifically from the fact that the angel of death "passed over" the houses of the Israelites during the plague which killed the eldest sons of the Egyptians. Passover is a holiday ...

Latibule

I like words and I recently discovered Save the Words , a website which allows you to adopt words that have faded from the English lexicon and are endanger of being dropped from the Oxford English Dictionary. When you adopt a word, you agree to use it in conversation and writing in an attempt to re-introduce said word back into regular usage. It is exactly as geeky as it sounds. And I love it. A latibule is a hiding place. Use it in a sentence, please. After my son goes to bed, I pull out the good chocolate from my latibule and have a "mommy moment". The perfect latibule was just behind the northwest corner of the barn, where one had a clear view during "Kick the Can". She tucked the movie stub into an old chocolate box, her latibule for sentimental souvenirs. I like the sound of latibule, though I think I would spend more time defining it and defending myself than actually using it. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure how often I use the ...

Would I Do?

Palm Sunday Mark 11:1-11 One of my core memories is of a parishioner who said, "I don't think I would have been as brave as the three in the fiery furnace. I think I would have just bowed to the king. I would have bowed and known in my heart that I still loved God. I admire them, but I can tell the truth that I wouldn't have done it." (Daniel 3) To me, this man's honesty was just as brave. In front of his fellow Christians, in front of his pastor, he owned up to his own facts: he did not believe he would have had the courage to resist the pressures of the king. He would have rather continued to live, being faithful in secret, than risk dying painfully and prematurely for open obedience to God.  I can respect that kind of truth-telling. None of us want to be weighed in the balance and found wanting. For some of us, that's our greatest fear. The truth is, however, that I suspect most of us are not as brave as we think we are. The right side of history seems cle...