Found This on line and it got me to thinking theologically
Fr. Joe
All Dressed Up
Daily Devotional
By Elizabeth Baumann
My two little girls love the Fancy Nancy books by Jane O’Connor. Nancy is a little girl who loves everything to be fancy—she laces her vocabulary with French, wears frills on her socks, decks her bedroom in ruffles and Christmas lights, and always has sprinkles on her ice cream. Her family, including her little sister, are not fancy. Her stories unfold as conflict ensues from Nancy’s trying to make her family fancier.
At the risk of jettisoning modesty and meekness, I think of Nancy when I read the line in today’s lesson: “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Nancy knows no limits when she gets dressed. Even her curly hair erupts with decorations. She stands out of most of the books’ illustrations as an outrageous concoction of color amid an otherwise ordinary scene. Likewise, the virtues are not bland, they may well make us look ridiculous in the eyes of the world, they may spark conflict with others’ values—and there is no such thing as taking them too far!
Like Nancy, my own girls love dressing up. Children know the power of clothes to help us know who we are and imagine who we want to be. I don’t think Paul made a mistake when he chose the seemingly mundane verb “clothe.” Virtues don’t come from within us. We take them as whole garments from Jesus himself and we learn to put them on, making us who we are, fitting us for the things we will do. If you’re going to do a fancy thing—like be holy—or go to a fancy place—like Heaven—first you put on your fancy clothes. And if my children show me anything, it’s that when dressing up there is only one rule: “The more, the better.”
Ms Baumann bio (which I suspect is a bit tongue-in-cheek) appears below:
Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.