“On every side I am tossed by the waves of business, and sunk by storms, so that I may truly say, ‘I have come into the depth of the sea, and the storm has overwhelmed me’ (Psalm 68:3). After business I long to return to my heart; but, driven therefrom by vain tumults of thoughts, I am unable to return…”

This tension isn’t a feature unique to modern life. It has always been a challenge, from Mary and Martha until now. No, even further back, to the Garden and the Fall, when our previously joyful work was cursed to come at the expense of thorns and sweat. This struggle is not new. That is encouraging—for we are not alone—but it is also eye-opening: the tension is not going to go away until all things are made right. To avoid it would mean either isolating ourselves and shirking responsibility or being consumed by busyness and missing out on God in the process. It’s not a tension we can grow past, but at least it’s one we can grow through.

The telltales for me are my spiritual rhythms. When I’m serving in my own strength, gritting my teeth and pushing through, I grow fruit of bitterness and frustration instead of love, and my temporary happiness comes either from people’s opinions of me or from some subjective measurement of how much of my task list I’ve accomplished. That is the fruit of Martha living.

Instead, when I’m faithful in consistently practicing spiritual rhythms like silence, solitude, prayer, and scripture meditation, I am able joyfully to live in the middle of the tension and while experiencing the fruit of the Spirit and seeing God do kingdom work through me. Instead of temporary happiness, I experience deep joy from the Spirit. The difference is death versus life, slavery versus freedom, exhaustion versus empowerment. The Northumbria Community’s Aidan Compline says it well:

May the virtue of our daily work
hallow our nightly prayers.
May our sleep be deep and soft
so our work be fresh and hard.

Our God-given work ought be holy, fresh, and hard—but in order to be so, it must be in balance with our rest. It is the healthy tension between work and rest which gives each its meaning. Without holy work, our rest is simply inactivity. Without hearty rest, our work is simply activity. Between them, empowered by the Spirit, we live in healthy tension.

Welcome to the blog, friends from the 2011 Inner Journey spiritual disciplines retreat! What a great time. I loved spending a weekend in worship with you all.

Below is the resource list I mentioned at the retreat for practicing prayer and the daily offices.

Click on any title to view that book at Amazon.

The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn & Wintertime	The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime
The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime	The Divine Hours: Pocket Edition
Celtic Daily Prayer	Prayers Across the Centuries
Mosaic Bible Imi. Leather	Mosaic Bible Hardcover

Thanks to Thomas à Kempis for this gem from The Imitation of Christ. It’s a perfect prayer for a Lenten evening.

Grant me Your grace, O most merciful Jesus, that it may be with me, and work with me, and remain with me to the very end. Grant that I may always desire and will that which is most acceptable and pleasing to You. Let Your will be mine. Let my will always follow Yours and agree perfectly with it. Let my will be one with Yours in willing and in not willing, and let me be unable to will or not will anything but what You will or do not will. Grant that I may die to all things in this world, and for Your sake love to be despised and unknown in this life. Give me above all desires the desire to rest in You, and in You let my heart have peace. You are true peace of heart. You alone are its rest. Without You all things are difficult and troubled. In this peace, the selfsame that is in You, the Most High, the everlasting Good, I will sleep and take my rest. Amen.

I felt much the same way, but also I found the specific schedule she suggested fascinating… which I’ll explain after the video:

What strikes me about Gamble’s schedule is how similar it seems to the schedule of fixed-hour prayer, especially the practice of rising during “the watches of the night” in order to pray (if you’re not aware of this practice, I highly suggest reading up on the biblical basis and history of fixed-hour prayer; for starters, check out the Judaism & Early Church section of the Wikipedia Canonical Hours article).  Just look over the table below, which shows the Greek Orthodox hours, and compare the highlighted sections to what Gamble said in her talk:

When I first heard about the practice of waking up in the middle of the night to pray, I thought, How in the world did monks do that? I’d be completely exhausted. It sounds kind of weird/ascetic/unhealthy. And then I watched that video. What if this practice actually far better matches our natural sleep patterns than our modern schedules do?  I also found surprising the language Gamble employed when she describe the clarity people experienced upon waking.  During the day our minds are pulled so many directions that undistracted prayer is extraordinarily difficult.  What if this moment of clarity were experienced during prayer and silent listening?  Could we finally pay attention to the “still, small voice” of God’s Spirit?

(Click any photo here to find its photographer on Flickr.)

In each of these photographs, the negative space surrounding the subject “makes” the photo, revealing the beauty of the subject.

What we might be tempted to call “emptiness” actually provides context and balance to the image, allowing us to see the subject in a new way.

I’ve been reading some blog posts Justin McRoberts wrote about rest & the Sabbath. In one he says, “…it’s been the discipline of silence/stillness that [has] given meaning and life to the rest, the same way Sabbath gives meaning and shape to all other days of the week.”

Sabbath is like negative space in our lives.  It is not the day when what is meaningful stops; it is the day that imbues our other days with meaning, giving shape and context to our activity.