Congregational Application of the Practice
This month, we are focusing on the ordinary moments and rhythms in our lives as avenues for worship of the living God. As Wendell Berry writes, “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” We invite you to choose one ordinary rhythm in your daily life to use as a doorway to worship because the possibilities for the sacred are everywhere.
Consider these examples:
As you stand in line at the grocery store, move toward God in prayer to enter his rest.
As you change your daughter or sons, use it as a moment to thank God for your life and those he has placed in it.
The laundry can become a moment for confession of sin and a reminder of his declared cleanliness over us.
Consider these examples:
As you stand in line at the grocery store, move toward God in prayer to enter his rest.
As you change your daughter or sons, use it as a moment to thank God for your life and those he has placed in it.
The laundry can become a moment for confession of sin and a reminder of his declared cleanliness over us.
Study Resources
Brother Lawrence was a seventeenth century Christian who had a dramatic spiritual awakening at the age of eighteen. Seeing a tree in winter, his soul suddenly opened to the presence of God. Within six years he had entered a Carmelite monastery in Paris, where he worked chiefly in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning. He practiced a simple and natural method. He merely turned his attention to the Divine Presence available at all times during any activity. He reports that he was as fully present with God while washing dishes in the kitchen as he was when partaking of the sacrament in worship.
Every Moment Holy brings new liturgies for the ordinary events of daily life, such as A Liturgy for Feasting with Friends or A Liturgy for Laundering or A Liturgy for the First Hearthfire of the Season. These prayers are ways of reminding us that our lives are shot through with sacred purpose even when, especially when, we are too busy or too caught up in our busyness to notice.
Framed around one ordinary day, Liturgy of the Ordinary explores daily life through the lens of liturgy, small practices, and habits that form us. Each chapter looks at something―making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her keys―that the author does every day. Drawing from the diversity of her life as a campus minister, Anglican priest, friend, wife, and mother, Tish Harrison Warren opens up a practical theology of the everyday. Each activity is related to a spiritual practice as well as an aspect of our Sunday worship.
You can find scripture reading plans, audio recordings in multiple translations, and more on our app!