After a summer of watching and waiting for things to clear, and not having that hope realized, I am excited to get the fall activities up and running. I know it won’t be what we are used to yet, but some shape to our weeks may make life feel more ordered in the midst of chaos.

I am glad to know the crafters are crafting twice a month on the third floor. The bell choir will be ringing rehearsals in our sanctuary Thursday nights; the choir’s voices will rise on Wednesdays. Contemporary rituals prepare for these times: the washing of hands, the slipping on of masks, the measuring of spaces between one and another.

The people of God have often used rhythms to organize their life. Every week the Jewish people engaged in sabbath practices. It was their way of reminding themselves that all of life flows toward the impulse to rest in God’s good gifts.

They also celebrate certain holy days each year: Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Pesach or Passover (remembering the Exodus event).

Christians shifted our weekly holy day to Sunday in honor of Jesus’ resurrection. And our annual holidays also recall key events in the life of Jesus and the movement that he formed: Christmas (the birth of Jesus), Easter (the day of his resurrection), and Pentecost (the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church).

I would suggest that within these broad movements that you attend to regularly practiced rituals to organize your everyday life:

• table prayers at meals
• making the sign of cross on your forehead while bathing
• a weekly phone call to loved ones
• offering short prayers for news items that cross your path
• a morning or evening walk
• a reading of Scripture or a devotion
• a pause before sleep to thank God for the day’s blessings, while entrusting the day’s troubling into God’s hands

Author Casper ter Kuile notes that the simple practices which we engage in can help us notice the sacredness of everyday activities. In many and various ways, we can note the moments that God’s pathway intersects with ours.

About Philip Ruge-Jones

After I served for eighteen years as a professor of theology at Texas Lutheran University, my family decided to return to the Midwest where my wife and I grew up, attended college and seminary. Read more...