I am reading Hallowed Be This House by Thomas Howard. I am enjoying it so much, I want to share it with you...
“And as is true of any holy place, this one has for its activity the marking and celebrating of what is true and the keeping alive of the vision of what is true; namely, that is holy. This is done by offering things up in acts of consecration and praise.
This is what lifts those things up from the heap of mere ordinariness and makes them extraordinary (holy).
They are ordinary things, of course, like eating and drinking and working and playing and bread and wine; but it is the ordinary stuff lifted up which is the holy. Holy things for the Christian and the Jew in any case, aren’t some remote category of things- mumbo jumbos, arcane regalia, or basalt meteorites from the sky. Holy things are ordinary things perceived in their true light, that is, as bearers of the divine mysteries and glory to us.
Looked at this way, eating becomes eucharistic, and working becomes the opus dei, and loving becomes an image of the City of God. It is our task in this shrine to take these ordinary things and, by lifting them up in oblation to God where we are set free to live in the splendor where eating and drinking and working and playing are known for what they really are forms of perpetual worship and therefore bliss.”
I like this post very much. So all of God's creation is holy, and I know God says 'Be you holy, for I am holy,' and he thus consecrates his children and sanctifies them and they are 'God breathed' by his Holy Spirit. I see life as a miracle everyday. When I ask God for little things in life, even when it is asking Him to help me find something in a drawer, or closet which I am looking for, it is always when I call out to Him for help, that I am reaching in a drawer and placing my hands on the very thing I was searching for...always, always, He answers my little, humble prayers, as He see the holiness in the ordinary. Lovely post to God's holiness. When we cry out to God, he hears our every prayer. I love the line you chose about daily life being a form of perpetual worship and therefore being bliss.
ReplyDeleteTeresa in California
http://amagicalwhimsy.blogspot.com/
Thank you Teresa. That happens to me all the time too! Praying to find things in my house. My family knows my funny habit of hiding gifts and forgetting where I've put them. I run around like a crazy on Christmas Eve and finally when I am desperate I ask God for help and that's exactly when I find them!
DeleteTotally unrelated to your post, but in response to losing gifts: I have begun wrapping gifts as I buy them, and I have a "gift bin" in my attic to hold them all so I always know where they are. It also contains little (unwrapped) odds and ends I have found on sale that would make good last minute gifts when an extra guest shows up for a holiday, or when we visit and need a little housewarming token, etc.
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