The Spirituality of Everyday Life

...for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

 

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe, as you hold out the word of life....(Phil. 2: 13-16).

 

When my children were very small, I often heard from the pulpit that parents were their child's first teachers, something that I kind of worried about.  I did not know exactly how to go about "teaching" my children about the faith.  Should we have family prayer time?  Family bible study?  Did I need a book to help me get started?

 

Now, with the perspective of age and more biblical knowledge, I think it is true that parents are the child's first teachers, but not in the formal sense of 'teaching.'  Now that I know the passage from Philippians above -- it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose,-- and now that I understand prayer as opening our lives to the action of God, I more understand the "spirituality of everyday life."

 

Most of us understand prayer as something we do, but actually, prayer is allowing God to enter and to "do" in our everyday lives.  Prayer is allowing ourselves to be bathed daily in the goodness and love of God, allowing it to flow over us, around us, in us, and through us.  As Paul tells the Philippians: "Do everything without complaining or arguing,....children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation...."  He does not tell us to go to Africa as missionaries or to do penance for our sins; he simply says that God will work in us to will and to act according to His purpose for us.  I do love this, for it means that as we go about our daily lives with openness to God, He will "guide our feet into the way of peace," as I wrote a few days ago.

 

In Opening to God, David Brenner says that prayer is "resting in the reality of our being-in-God. This is why Teresa of Avila says that the important thing in prayer is not to think much but to love much.  Prayer that does not begin to sink to the heart will inevitably become arid and frustrating. However, when we allow prayer to begin to seep from our minds to our depths, it gives God access to those depths.  Then, and only then, can prayer spontaneously emerge as God's action in us.  And when it does, prayer becomes the overflow of the living waters that spring up from our depths."

 

To bring this reflection back to being our child's first teacher, I now understand prayer like my daily bath or shower -- the one thing in my day as a mother that allowed me to return refreshed and renewed to feeding, caring for, attending to my children.  In a bath or shower, nothing is covered up; nothing looks better than it is -- we allow the water to flow over us, warts and all, renewing, energizing, relaxing, draining away the pressures and failures of the moment.  In all my life, a bath has never become boring or ho-hum.  No matter how many times I have bathed or showered, each time is newly refreshing and anointing.  I emerge from a bath or shower with the dirt gone, cleansed, renewed, ready for the next task -- or ready for sleep.  And prayer is like that too.  It never grows old; each day, it readies me for the next thing, or for sleep.  It allows God into the depths of my soul, where He can cleanse me, relax me, ease my sorrow and pain, and energize me for the day.

 

Yesterday, I wrote about the "fire" that Jesus came to cast upon the earth, and I promised to write about the universal characteristics of that fire whenever it emerges in history.  I have not forgotten that promise, but it seems to me that each morning, my plans are not nearly as important as what the Holy Spirit has planned for the day.  As He bathes me in His love, my plans often get shifted to the back burner.  That is what I mean by the "spirituality of everyday life."  And that is why I now believe that "formal teaching" of our children is not nearly as important as letting them experience the flow of the Spirit in and around our daily lives, letting them know that "...it is God who works in us to will and to act according to His purpose" for us.  We may not at the moment understand His purpose, but we allow Him daily to bathe us in His love and action in our lives.