Lectio
“The more your life is full, the more you need to prioritize disciplines of abstinence, specifically disciplines of rest, such as Sabbath and silence and solitude and quiet in the morning and sleep.”
— John Mark Comer, Developing a Rule of Life
Meditatio
It is very easy, in our busyness, whether to keep up or to get ahead, to lose sight of the most essential aspects of our lives. That is, the busier we get, the more we tend to neglect our health, our family, and God. Before we know it, we are eating for convenience rather than nutrition, we are passing out rather than lying down for a good night’s sleep, and we find ourselves not having time for the ones we love or for the Lord.
There’s a reason we are commanded to love God first and above everything else, and to love others in the same way that we love God. Because, among other things, this keeps our lives in balance. Right worship gives us right focus, right perspective, and right thinking, which leads us to right action. And it does this not by adding to our already busy lives and overfilled schedules, but by limiting or restricting them, for by observing even the minimum of our holy obligations, we find that our lives are suddenly more well balanced in the direction of love.
This does not mean that mindlessly and apathetically going through the motions of worship is enough to put us into right relationship with God, but going through the motions, even as a mere matter of practice, is a good place to start. By incorporating disciplines around fasting or abstinence, Sabbath rest, Sunday worship, and regular periods of silence and solitude into our days and weeks, we are not guaranteed sainthood, but we at least give ourselves some boundaries within which, by grace, to work toward it.
The purpose of the liturgical calendar, the Liturgy of the Hours, and the seven day cycle of work and rest is not to make us live boring, lifeless lives as automatons for God. Rather, within the constraints of our spiritual and religious practices and observances, we are allowed to be truly ourselves through His Spirit and for His glory. By bringing us closer to Him through His sacraments, we begin to feel the freedom from the world to which our busyness binds us. Through our obedience to His word in our lives, we are given the freedom to be who He intended us to be, which is spiritual beings embodied with physical needs, not merely physical bodies whose needs are the beginning and end of all meaning in our lives.
Our practices, then, when approached with reverence, humility, and sincerity, do not give us grace, but help to better align us with the grace already given — the grace that called us to these practices to begin with and which sustains us through them in spite of our busyness. This is why Jesus tells us that God made the Sabbath for us, not us for the Sabbath, because the Sabbath, even as an obligation, is exactly a gift. As such, it gives us more than it asks of us, even when what it asks of us feels like more than we are willing or able to give.
Oratio
More Than Enough
Why can I not enjoy this moment
why can I not surrender
to this beauty
to this grace
Your will
Your love
Your mercy
unfolding before me
unfolding within me
more than enough
somehow never enough
always enough
Contemplatio
The freedom you are looking for is not on the other side of your obligations — it is hidden inside them, waiting for you to stop long enough to receive it. You do not need to feel holy to be held by grace; you only need to show up, even imperfectly, and let the practice carry you further than your feelings can. Stay in the quiet with this, saying yes to whatever He wants to stir in you.
Related Scripture
“It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.”
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like A Joy That Forgets Itself: Teresa of Ávila and the Prayer We Cannot Earn (Lectio Divina), which sits with the same truth found here — that grace is never something we earn through our practices, only something we’re given room to receive.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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