Daily Habits

KNEELING PRAYER THREE TIMES A DAY

The world is made of words.  Even small, repeated words have power. Regular, carefully placed prayer is one of the keystone habits of spiritual formation and is the beginning of building the trellis of habit. By framing our day in the words of prayer, we frame the day of love.

ONE MEAL WITH OTHERS

We were made to eat, so the table must be our center of gravity.  The habit of making time for one communal meal each day forces us to reorient our schedules and our space around food and each other.  The more the table becomes our center of gravity, the more it draws our neighbors into gospel community.

ONE HOUR WITH PHONE OFF

We were made for presence, but so often our phones are the cause of our absence. To be two places at a time is to be no place at all. Turning off our phone for an hour a day is a way to turn our gaze up to each other, whether that be children, coworkers, friends, or neighbors. Our habits of attention are habits of love. To resist absence is to love neighbor.

SCRIPTURE BEFORE PHONE

Refusing to check the phone until after reading a passage of Scripture is a way of replacing the question "What do I need to do today?" with a better one, "Who am I and who am I becoming?"  We have no stable identity outside of Jesus.  Daily immersion in the Scriptures resists the anxiety of emails, the anger of the news, and the envy of social media.  Instead it forms us daily in our true identity as children of the King, dearly loved.