THE UNREHEARSED LIFE
If you asked me to play a tune on the piano, I am sure I could not even squeak out “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” If you asked me to paddle you across a lake, I am pretty sure that a few strokes into the trip we would be swimming. However, it you asked me to pray for you or help you talk through a life-sized problem you are facing, there is a chance, albeit a small one, that I might be able to help.
You see, we practice our spiritual disciplines so we can live what I have come to call an unrehearsed life. We practice them so when the moment comes and our best spiritual self is needed to respond, we don’t have to do a Google search to find out what to do. We respond out of all that God has formed us to be over the years of relating to Him: through our disciplines.
Years of practice at the piano make it possible for you, later on, to quietly, effortlessly, play something that soothes your soul. Years spent paddling a canoe make it possible for you to easily glide out onto a lake and be in the kind of peaceful, soulful environment that enables you to fully think something through.
God does not reward us on a spiritual point system for how often we pray or fast or study His word. There is no ‘big box store points reward card’ for how well we play the piano or how well we paddle the canoe or for how often or eloquent we pray. He rewards us with Himself for the time spent in our spiritual disciplines, tuning our heart to His.
Like the Sabbath is made for us and not us for the Sabbath, that is when we discover that our disciplines serve us: they familiarize us with who God really is so we can readily find Him, even in the dark. We move from knowledge of Him to knowing Him … from some measure of doubt to some measure of certainty … from reading it on-line to living it in real time. We discover, much to our amazement really, that we have moved into the unrehearsed life. And there is no telling what God might invite you to join Him in, in life’s myriad of daily unrehearsable moments .
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08/13/24