
We tell each other over and over, back and forth, the truth of who we are and who God is.
Christian friendships are call-and-response friendships. We are waiting, but we will make it home. We have hope because our Lord has promised that he is preparing a place for us.
Redemption is crashing into our little stretch of the universe, bit by bit, day by day, mile by coming mile. The Christian faith teaches that all work that is not immoral or unethical is part of God’s kingdom mission. We must guard against those practices-both in the church and in our daily life-that shape us into mere consumers. I need rituals.but what I crave is novelty. But what I crave is novelty and stimulation. I need rituals that encourage me to embrace what is repetitive, ancient, and quiet. Examining my daily liturgy as a liturgy-as something that both revealed and shaped what I love and worship-allowed me to realize that my daily practices were malforming me, making me less alive, less human, less able to give and receive love throughout my day.
He loved others, healed others, preached, taught, rebuked, and redeemed not in order to gain the Father’s approval, but out of his rooted certainty in the Father’s love. His every activity unfurls from his identity as the Beloved.
Jesus is eternally beloved by the Father. The Word brushed his teeth-or at least he would have, if the Word had been a twenty-first-century American instead of a first-century Judean. Warren served up multiple reminders that the stuff of our daily lives serves to point us back to Jesus, and that there are no wasted moments that he can’t redeem for his glory.
Liturgy of the Ordinary was not one of those. I’ll admit: some of the books on that list were difficult to work through and took a little more effort. I tackled Tish Harrison Warren’s Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Lifeas a part of my summer reading list.