Being Intentional about Relating Faith to Life
During the last three months when I have not been working every day as a pastor I have discovered the difficulty of relating my faith to my daily life. There are so many distractions that beg for my attention. Outside of a normal work office environment, without the structure of the daily and weekly set of activities, it takes discipline and intentionality to think about my relating faith to life. An added distraction is the anxiety produced by following the news and the “fake news”—social media. I am convinced that our new president would love to have us think of him—and him only—for at least the next 1455 days! I think we all need to step away from following his actions, and especially his opinions, as often as we can. But this new distraction just raises the awareness of how intentional we need to be with relating our faith to life on a daily basis.
At least we are not alone with being challenged by distractions in life. In her book A World According To God: Practices for Putting Faith at the Center of Your Life Martha Stortz writes: “In a culture dedicated to distraction, attending to what is in front of us presents a real challenge. Distraction is not only a problem for twenty-first-century Christians. The biblical record reveals that the disciples of Jesus had similar trouble focusing.” (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Page 15). The author suggests following the disciplines of the Christian life to deal with our distractions. These include baptism, the Lord’s Supper, prayer, forgiveness, and fidelity. I do know that the structure of weekly worship has helped me to keep God at the center of my life. When I did not attend worship the first couple of weeks after my last interim ended, it was much easier to slide on other faith practices that I normally do on a daily basis. Devotional life, including Scripture reading and prayer, took more effort to do. Not being in a normal faith community that a church provides led me to not have an outlet for my daily efforts of service. Although I could practice my faith at home, it did not seem the same without the members of the congregation where I was serving—those I defined as my ministry arena-- to reach out to.
I have begun to see what is the challenge for every layperson. The challenge seems to be three-fold. First, how do you keep your efforts at living a Christian life at the center of your life? There are so many other voices calling every day. You need to “live in the world” and stay informed, but in doing so it is very easy to let that control your life. Second, where do I find the time for devotional life? Although I have the time now to “come back to center myself on God,” I know from experiencing the many demands of normal daily life that it is not easy. Third, how do I look at my life as being in service to others?
I think that living each day in relationship to Christ is helped by some intentionality about doing it. It is good to prioritize your faith by putting devotional practices first. However, If the beginning of each day is found to be overwhelming, why not include these practices at mealtime or bedtime? Maybe the framing for the next day needs to be done the night before when you ask, “how will my life reflect God’s place in it tomorrow? For the person who is occupied with all day stuff, maybe devotional life is something you do along the way. When you think of someone or something, you can follow the example of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and pray, “Gracious God, be with him or her or them." Finally, each one of us can look at each day as serving whoever comes into our lives along the way. If your life doesn’t always come into contact with someone to serve in person, you can connect with them through various communication channels, such as texting and e-mail, and support them in their daily endeavors. If it is not an unwanted sales call, you may look at each telephone conversation as a chance to brighten someone else's day.
Above all, in these anxious times, it will be important to stay connected to other human beings. People need other logical people to deal with anxiety. What really can deflect us from our lives being ones of Christian service are the constant interruptions to our thoughts and feelings by outside sources. We should keep God first by each day following the psalmist’s words about God—“be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted on the earth.”
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