When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you (Matthew 6:6 NIV).
From the earliest days of Christian history, believers have developed ways of structuring our use of time to reflect our most fundamental beliefs and to commemorate our most meaningful historical events. The Christian year is built around this calendar of events starting with Advent and Christmas, followed by Epiphany, Lent and Easter, with Pentecost, and then Ordinary Time, which lead back into harvest and All Saints' Day. We go full circle and arrive back at Advent where the calendar repeats itself once more. The rhythm of the seasons in each year helps us to remember with thanksgiving the ongoing, well-ordered and redemptive work of Christ.
The Christian week focuses on the blessings and joys of creation, when after six days of work, the Lord ceased from his labors and embraced sabbath rest. Setting apart one day each week, God modeled for his children how he wants us to live. He wants us to work faithfully for six days and then rest deeply for one. That rhythm is the most life-sustaining of all and will keep us from burning out on too much work, by far the most damaging temptation of seeking to live fully today. Choosing sabbath as a slow down, rest, delight, notice and be fulfilled lifestyle will lead us into the abundant life Christ invites us to embrace and enjoy.
For the Christian even a day in itself is to be seen as holy. The church fathers and mothers practiced their life of prayer and devotion throughout their days. Known as the "hours" (liturgy of the hours or book of hours) or the "office" (divine or daily office), these are the seven points in the day that are markers of holiness. Based on Psalm 119:164, "Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws," the daily office sets apart holy moments in the day to pause, reflect and remember our source of life (matins in the morning; vespers in the evening; terce, sext and none, the third, sixth and ninth hours of midday; compline just before bed; and prime for the very early morning). It was first practiced in early monastic communities, and the daily office is still followed today in Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran and Reformed churches (although not exactly alike). These holy times of the day are worth our consideration regardless of our Christian tradition. For evangelicals, this expands the "daily quiet time" from one set time each day to several prayers and pauses throughout the day. Can we argue with such value for the soul?
In addition to the church calendar, the Christian week and the daily office, our faith tradition honors the importance of holy spaces (with corresponding biblical theologies of space and architecture) and holy places (Jerusalem, Rome, Canterbury, or Santiago).
All in all, time and space have been important priorities for Christians throughout church history. The use of time and space to aid us in our spiritual development is not a new concept. Neither is our abuse and neglect of both. Therefore, there is a desperate need for us to use our time for the specific growth and development of our spiritual lives—the care and nurture of our souls.
Time is our most basic and often the most precious currency we have. Once spent it's gone forever, except for the memories. As the wisdom of Solomon teaches us in Ecclesiastes 3:1, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven." Likewise, David reminds us in Psalm 31:15, "My times are in your hands." As with them, it is true for us: There is a time for everything under heaven, and our times are in God's hands.
Creating space for God is the number one discipline of the soul, and the best place to do that is in our devotional prayer closet (in addition to and complementary of the time we share with God's people in worship and prayer as a faith community). Do you have a personal place and time set apart to meet alone with God? You might practice the daily office and set apart seven times each day to enter this space, but at minimum Christ's followers should set apart at least one part of every day for this purpose. Known as a quiet time or daily devotions, this establishes a rhythm of place and time to attend to the loving embrace and tender voice of almighty God.
Here, we say no to all worldly intrusions in order to say yes to all that God delights to offer, including his love, grace, mercy, peace, joy, strength, wisdom, direction, pleasure, presence and ongoing empowerment. In this set apart time and space we reorder our loves and reorient our lives around God-honoring priorities. When we press the pause button and stop long enough to enter and enjoy his loving embrace, we receive more and more of God. As Mark Buchanan reminds us, as we rest in God, we discover the rest of God:
Most of us feel utterly ransacked. We are waylaid by endless demands and stifling routines. Even our vacations have a panicky, task-like edge to them. "If I only had more time," is the mantra of our age. But is this the real problem? What we've really lost is "the rest of God—the rest God bestows and, with it, that part of himself" we can know only through stillness.
So Jesus inquires of his disciples,
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly (Matthew 11:28-30 The message).
Learning the unforced rhythms of grace requires practice. We're prone to meeting the demands of the busy life. We wake up each day and maximize every moment before us: getting ready as fast as possible, eating a quick breakfast before running out the door, packing every possible moment with meetings, work, chores, children, exercise, driving, shopping, eating, e-mails, phone calls, errands, ministry, just to name a few. Yes, our lives are stretched to the maximum; our days are full from the time we awaken to the time we drop into bed. And though we're living very full days, we often come to the realization that in fact we're quite unfulfilled because there's no time to simply be.
Twentieth-century spiritual formation author Evelyn Underhill says it this way:
We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual—even the religious—plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, not having and not doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.
It sounds to me like she understands the heart of learning the unforced rhythms of grace.
Where do we learn these unforced rhythms of grace? In our prayer closets, where we slow down long enough to enter into this open, uncluttered space at an unhurried pace, and where we learn to do nothing well. It's here where we discover the true values and sweet virtues of silence and solitude. Time alone with God that's life-giving, life-sustaining, life-redeeming, and life-transforming.
The key is unhurried, uncluttered, unhindered space—experienced in our prayer closets so we can enter the world with a fuller sense of God's abiding presence and peace, which guide and sustain us every step of the way. Our prayer closets are set-apart spaces within the bounds of our home environment (or another quiet location). This set-apart time and space is enhanced by the beauty and joy of God's creation, like enjoying the expanse of the sky, water, mountains, trees, birds, animals and all that he provides for us to savor with all of our senses. It is deepened all the more when we're together with our spiritual family (our local believing community) in regular times of worship, prayer, study, confession, thanksgiving, and consecration.
What happens in our prayer closet? We practice the threefold disciplines of Scripture reading (receiving the Word of God into the good soil of our soul), prayer (conversing honestly with and listening attentively to God) and reflection (in the pages of our journals or other ways of collecting the experiences of life and learning from them). These are the three basic nutrients of the spiritual life. The Word, our source of life, is received as food to nourish and replenish our tired and weary souls. In prayer we welcome the voice of the Father as he whispers truth, love and counsel into our daily existence. With reflection, we pause to remember and give thanks for the gifts that life has to offer us, as we look around and within to determine the best ways to move forward in sharing these with others.
There are many options for each of these basic disciplines. A wonderful resource for exploring them in depth is Adele Calhoun's Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, in which you will be invited into silence and solitude, submission and surrender, confession, and forgiveness, listening and interactive prayer—soaking in the joy of intimacy with Christ.
As we discover afresh the joy of an ever-deepening devotional experience, the gift of new life is brought to our souls. Out of this sacred space, we enter into community worship and shared witness with vitality that's contagious—both to the body of Christ and the world we've been called to serve together in Jesus' name.
Those who traveled with Jesus watched him regularly create time and space to be alone and quiet before the Father. This was an obvious priority for him. His disciples were all privy to these ongoing times of prayer and reflection. "Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed" (Luke 5:16). "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed" (Mark 1:35).
The beloved disciple of the Gospel of John, who many believe was the apostle John, drew near to Jesus on multiple occasions. He remains a stark contrast to Judas the Betrayer, the disciple who turned away from Jesus and continually rejected Jesus' initiatives to come close, draw near, and follow him (cf. John 13; 18).
What about for you, a devoted disciple who longs for intimacy with Christ and being known fully as his beloved disciple? Will you take the time to create the space to meet with the lover of your soul and the giver of your life? The richest fellowship with Jesus is most accessible at his feet or reclining at table with him. The invitation to the beloved is also offered to you, his dearly loved child. Come close, draw near and follow him with a well-ordered and properly reordered heart. "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest" (Mark 6:31).
Stephen A. Macchia is founding president of Leadership Transformations, Inc. and is the director of the Pierce Center for Disciple-Building at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. This article was excerpted from Crafting a Rule of Life, used by permission of InterVarsity Press PO Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.
Copyright © 2012 by Christianity Today/Christian Bible Studies. Photo by Stephanie Klepacki on Unsplash
