I have a new plant sitting on the window sill of “The Princess Room.” Its pink flowers will undoubtedly bring delight to the heart of my oldest granddaughter–primary inhabitant of that particular guest room and the reason it is so named.
Now, if I can only keep the plant alive!
I have a terrible track record with houseplants. I wonder sometimes if they cringe or quiver in fear when they learn their destination–if maybe there’s a houseplant oral history in which my house is marked as “trouble” or has a “zero stars” rating. Somehow, I, who can keep a thriving garden for thirty-plus summers, can also walk by a houseplant multiple times a day, seven days a week without it once occurring to me that it might need a drink of water!
The Refuge of Regular Rhythms
Everything changed when I discovered a routine with my plants. (Am I beginning to sound like an infomercial? I’m not selling anything, so read on…) Every weekend, the Norfolk pine gets a good dousing in the kitchen sink, which reminds me to water the hibiscus and that pink-flowered plant in the guest room. It’s so simple that I wonder why I didn’t set this regular routine in place ages ago!
Is there a behavior you’re trying to establish? Maybe for you, it’s exercise or Bible reading? Setting a specific time and sticking with it seems like a very small and obvious action, but it’s a key factor in establishing a habit.
Resources for You…
I’m thankful to have fairly well-established habits of reading. The Bible and other books are part of my everyday routine, and I’ve been assisted by a number of excellent resources to encourage me in this practice over the years. With the publication of Mason King’s new Short Guide to Spiritual Disciplines, I’ve been reminded of how easy it is to over-complicate the practices that are as life-giving to our souls as regular care has been for my grateful houseplants.
I’ll start with the newest and add a few others to encourage you in your own habits of holiness.
Spiritual disciplines are not a straightjacket or one more way to make you feel inadequate. They are life and breath to your walk with God.
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And Now Let’s Talk Books…
When I bring up the topic of spiritual disciplines in any of my talks, I get mixed responses. Some women are eager to have the discussion, curious, and looking for support. Others seem to feel overwhelmed, even resentful that their time has to be sliced and diced into one more segment, and they’re not really sure how to make it work.
Mason King offers A Short Guide to Spiritual Disciplines with the goal of encouraging readers to become healthy and engaged believers who are investing in their relationship with God.
It’s clear that no one becomes a mature Christian in the future without doing the work today. With that in view, King offers probing, big-picture questions to stir the thoughts. For example: If who you are today is the product of the choices from all your yesterdays, who are you becoming right now?
Rather than a list of tasks and advice, the book challenges readers to live their way into a relationship with God that affects their choices. We are wise when we lean into the daily rhythms of Bible reading and prayer with a long view that doesn’t get discouraged if bushes don’t burn and lightning doesn’t flash from every page.
As Psalm 1 beautifully illustrates, we are invited to “be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.” Christ is that River of refreshment, but in 2023, our attention is often misplaced and we waste our delight and squander our attention on screens. We cave in to distractions that mask our deeper needs that only God is able to fulfill.
King writes about using the “hinges” in his day for processing his work and his feelings in conversation with God. The goal is always to eliminate hurry, be still, listen for the Lord, listen to our people, chase quiet moments for confession, and actually feel our feelings. I imagine that Jesus’s approach to spiritual disciplines was as relaxed and natural as all this, a life patterned after joyful holiness and lived in simple communion with God.
Rather than a task list, A Short Guide to Spiritual Disciplines challenges you to lean into daily rhythms with a long view that doesn’t get discouraged if bushes don’t burn and lightning doesn’t flash from every page. @masonking @BHpub
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Many thanks to NetGalley and B&H Publishing Group for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.
Ingesting the Truth
John was not the first man in history to eat a book. Apparently, Jeremiah and Ezekiel also ingested truth, and like John, their words reveal the metabolized essence of having been in the presence of God. In Eat this Book, Eugene Peterson asserts that the challenge is for us to begin reading the words of Scripture–and then, to take the next step and begin “reading the Scriptures formatively, reading in order to live.” (xi)
To illustrate the kind of reading he’s advocating, Peterson employs the delightful imagery of a dog working with fortitude on a bone superimposed upon an image from the book of Isaiah of a “lion growling over its prey.” Apparently, that Hebrew word for “growling” is usually rendered as “meditate,” as in Psalm 1 where the righteous meditate on the Law of the Lord “day and night.” Eat This Book challenges us to read the Scriptures on their own terms, as God’s revelation, and to live them as we read them.
Prayer is an Invitation to Come, Weary and Overwhelmed
In A Praying Life, author Paul E. Miller writes, “a praying life feels like our family mealtimes, [because] prayer is all about relationship.” (8) When we make it formulaic and tear it away from real life, we miss the point, and it becomes as dry and unappetizing as yesterday’s muffins. In a real relationship, conversations go down rabbit trails, but when that happens in prayer, we complain that we’ve lost our train of thought and are tempted to give up.
When it seems as if all our messiness floats to the top like the layer of scum on dirty dishwater, we write ourselves off as hopeless and wish that we could pray with soaring syllables of praise. What a relief to read that prayer is an invitation to come, weary and overwhelmed! The God who made me wants to engage in an authentic relationship with the real me, not some super-spiritual version of me who shows up a few times a day for a quick conversation.
Daily Faith Formation
With so little time available in the average day for faith formation, I want to be diligent and focused–no fooling around on trivialities. The believers I most admire (from historical figures like Blaise Pascal to book mentors like Elisabeth Elliot) stress the importance of establishing habits of holiness, so when I learned that Jen Pollock Michel had written a book titled A Habit Called Faith: 40 Days in the Bible to Find and Follow Jesus, she had my immediate attention.
Michel argues that habit is not equivalent to empty ritual–a message that could be considered controversial in a culture that decries “going through the motions” in favor of something more “spontaneous” or “authentic.” Making a practice of our faith, showing up in the presence of God, opening the pages of scripture by faith can be a powerful routine, and Jen offers a forty-day trellis upon which the habit of faith may grow.
Beginners All Our Life
Philip Nation makes this wise statement in the introduction to Habits for Our Holiness: “The things we plant in our lives are the things that grow in our lives.” Spiritual disciplines, then, are part of our planting, a means to the desired end of a mature faith. Not an end in themselves, they are (to veer abruptly into another metaphor) tools in God’s hands for molding the believer.
What prevents the practice of spiritual disciplines from becoming stuffy and legalistic is love, for “as the central discipline of the Christian life, love is what propels habitual holiness . . . Internal transformation manifests itself in external action. It doesn’t work the other way around.” Habits for Our Holiness is an invitation to begin again in this life of obedience to — and love for — Christ’s commands. Thomas Merton said:
“We do not want to be beginners, but let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners all our life.”
With that in mind, Philip Nation presents the disciplines of worship, Bible study, and prayer as the foundation by which we declare that God owns our hearts, that we will resist temptation, cynicism, and passiveness through immersion in Scripture, and that we will take delight in the “Great Conversation,” the my-life-for-yours of intercessory prayer, the mystery of approaching the throne of God.
Keeping the Plant Alive!
Spiritual disciplines are not a straightjacket or one more way to make you feel inadequate.
They are life and breath to your walk with God.
What are your greatest challenges?
What resources have been most helpful to you?
Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Holding You in the Light,
5 resources for daily faith formation! It’s clear that no one becomes a mature Christian in the future without doing the work today. #bookreviews #spiritualdisciplines
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Living Our Days 
Oh I can so relate to the houseplant problem! I have killed nearly every plant I’ve ever come into contact with (my grandmother once gave me self-watering violets and promised I couldn’t kill those– only I did because I completely forgot to fill the reservoir!). I am doing much better now that I have designated Friday as my “watering” day!
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Yup! Routine is the answer!
And not only for house plants!
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That right there is the truth. Routine–for plants and for people. It’s the only way for us not to wither on the vine.
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And it does save effort, ultimately! Habits give us a safe place to fall back on when we’re weak.
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I’m guilty of many counts of negligent planticide. I try to avoid houseplants, but occasionally someone gives me one. One of the latest is doing well because it’s where I can see it at the kitchen counter. When I drink water with medicine, if my water bottle has a but left in it I don’t want, I’ll pour the rest on the plant. It’s growing new leaves, so I guess it’s working so far. 😀
I agree about spiritual routines. If we don’t plan to do things–they rarely get done. The biggest challenge for me is not to let the routine become just a routine, but to engage while reading the Bible and praying.
I don’t think I have read any of these resources. But I like what you’ve said about them. Probably my favorite is Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin. Others are Knowable Word by Peter Krol (both the book and blog by that name) and Engaging the Scripture by Deborah Haddix.
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Women of the Word is a classic! And I am just finishing up Jen Wilkin’s 2 Exodus studies which were EXCELLENT!
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I love this quote, Michele: “The things we plant in our lives are the things that grow in our lives.” That applies on so many levels, doesn’t it?
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I’m fresh in from a “violent “ weeding session—evidence that when growth gets out of control, it’s SO MUCH WORK to make it right!
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Michele, you always have such practical wisdom to share. Thank you for these insights on spiritual disciplines–and for these new resources! Of course, I always want to direct folks to Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, which I believe to be the best book on spiritual disciplines (and I’m guessing most of these authors quote him at least once!).
Thanks so much for joining the Grace at Home party at Imparting Grace. I’m featuring you this week!
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I love Richard’s book too—and also loved sharing his latest on humility earlier this year! What a great gift!
And thanks for your encouragement!
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Michele, you cracked me up with this: “I wonder sometimes if they cringe or quiver in fear when they learn their destination–if maybe there’s a houseplant oral history in which my house is marked as “trouble” or has a “zero stars” rating.” I’m sure I have a zero star rating as well!
So many things in life seem to depend on routine. It’s a good thing I love routine, I just need to build a few more things into it – keeping a good balance, of course. 🙂
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Yup, kinda concerned about that zero stars rating in plant travel guides…
And I NEED routine, but it always comes hard to me because it feels like prison. I have to stay very close to the WHY behind it.
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