Pursuing Veritas

This post originally served as a message at Arise Church

For some of us, waking up is the worst part of our day. For others of us, waking up is a chore, something we must do to get the day going. And for yet others us, waking up is the best part of our day, since it means that we can get going on all that we have to do. But for all of us, our days begin with the simple act of waking up.

But have you ever noticed how important waking up well is? Those first few moments after waking up really make a difference. There’s a reason that when someone is crabby we say, “they got up on the wrong side of the bed.” Because how we begin our days really matters. It sets the tone for your day—for everything that follows.

Now, I’m told that there are people who wake up very peacefully. Their eyes slowly open before their alarm after a night of uninterrupted rest. As they wake up, they can hear the sweet music of JoyFM wafting through their home, accompanied by the smell of freshly brewed coffee and bacon. They leisurely get out of bed—taking time to stretch and reflect on the day ahead—before grabbing their coffee and enjoying a few moments of solitude in the living room—or, if the weather’s nice, out on the veranda. Doesn’t that sound like a nice way to start your day?

Unfortunately, I’ve only ever experienced that in a dream. Mostly, I wake up to a long list of things to do, places to be, and people to make happy. I begin with making the little people happy—I’ve got to get up and get ready quickly so that I can get Bree up, and then help her get dressed, fed, and ready for school. Then it’s off to navigate morning traffic and all that the day holds. There’s rarely time for peaceful waking or a moment of solitude on the veranda that my house doesn’t have.

But something I’ve learned over the years is that how I wake up matters. How I begin my day impacts the rest of my day. And not because I wake up every morning feeling awesome and singing, “this is the day the Lord has made!” But it matters because what I do with the beginning of my journey through the day makes all the difference for the rest of that day—something I’ve also learned is true with other moments of beginning too.

I remember the first day that I woke up after moving to North Carolina. I’d piled all my stuff into a van, driven all through the night, and then slept in front seat of the van. The next morning, I began my time in North Carolina with the awareness that I had a crick in my back and the startling realization that I needed to buy deodorant before I met anyone from my graduate program later that morning. I wanted to start things off on the right foot with people—not smelling like I drove 700 miles without a shower. Because how we begin matters—how we wake up in the morning matters.

We’re thinking about waking up and beginning today because we’re kicking off our new series Liturgy of the Ordinary. Now, I realize that for many of us, the word liturgy sounds very church-y—and that’s not wrong. Today, most of the time you hear the word liturgy used, it’s a reference to how we order a church service: the prayers we pray, the songs we sing, how we deliver communion, those sorts of things. But the word liturgy comes from a couple of Greek terms that mean public working, or simply, “the way we do things.” Everything we do—even outside of church—is part of our daily liturgies—they’re part of way we do things.

Over the next several weeks, we’re going to focus on the ordinary everyday liturgies that make up our lives: how we wake up, how we eat leftovers, how we check email, how we sit in traffic—all the boring, unthinking, mundane things that make up life. But we’re not just going to focus on what we do—we’re going to be reflecting on how we can make those ordinary liturgies—those ordinary actions—more of a liturgy in the Christians sense too, how we can make them part of our daily interactions with God. Why? Because in the words of theologian and pastor Tish Harrison Warren, “God is forming us into a new people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of today.” (Warren, 21) So in this series, we’re going to be reflecting on our overlooked moments and routines so we can become aware of God’s presence in even the ordinary parts of life.

And as we do this, I want to highly recommend to you Tish’s book: The Liturgy of the Ordinary. It’ll come as no surprise that this was the inspiration for this series and each week as we talk about waking up or sitting in traffic or drinking tea, I want to encourage you to read alongside us. So valuable is this book that we’ve purchased a bunch of copies for you already and have them available at a discount for you in the Lobby. To be clear: this isn’t required reading or anything like that. But I do want to encourage you to read a chapter a week with us as we think about how God is forming us to be new people through the small moments and practices of our everyday lives.

As we kick off this series on ordinary moments, I want us to begin by considering why it’s so important to pay attention to our seemingly ordinary habits and actions. We’ll get back to the ordinariness of waking up in a bit—but first, why should we pay attention to the seemingly mundane, ordinary, boring parts of our lives—don’t we already have enough going on? There are several good reasons to pay attention to ordinary things.

For starters, we should pay attention to the ordinary things of our life because God is concerned with the ordinary things of our life. The Old Testament—the first part of the Bible—is filled with indications of how the daily grind of life is important to God. There are whole chapters—whole books even—of the Old Testament that are all about proscribing the ins and outs of daily life for God’s people Israel. And even in places where specific instruction isn’t offered, there’s the message of hearing and obeying the day-to-day things of God.

Listen to what Proverbs 6(20-23 NIV) says about this: My son, keep your father’s command and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Bind them always on your heart; fasten them around your neck. When you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you. For this command is a lamp, this teaching is a light, and correction and instruction are the way to life….

Do what with the things of God? Keep them around you and on you all the time so that you may be reminded of them constantly—when you fall asleep and when you wake up. In other words, pay attention to the ordinary things of your life, because those things matter to God.

Another reason we should pay attention to the ordinary things of our life is because the Church has always been a community of people who use those ordinary things to proclaim Jesus as King. The New Testament book of Acts tells the story of the early Church. And throughout Acts we see that the earliest followers of Jesus were all about habits, ways of living that put King Jesus as the center of their lives.

Listen to how Acts 2(42-47 NIV) describes the church: They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Again, there’s some church-y language in there, but look at the day-to-day things this short passage describes: learning, hanging out, eating, praying, working, helping—these are the basic things of life that we do every day. And those are the everyday practices of the early church. While we don’t need to try and replicate this precisely the same way today, we can learn from this model of paying attention to seemingly ordinary things. Because if the early Church can make eating together and hanging out a way to proclaim the good news that Jesus is King, we can too!

Finally, we should pay attention to the ordinary things of our life because ordinary things make a difference. Little habits and practices make a significant difference over time—for good or for evil. Having dessert after dinner is fine—but if you have dessert after every dinner, it’s going to make difference in how you feel. Reading for fifteen minutes a day may not seem like much but keep at it and you’ll finish close to twenty books in a year. And the list goes on and on—the small things we do add up day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month—and they can have a tremendous impact.

And here, I want to be clear about the different kinds of habits that we can form. We can create routines, actions or practices that we do unthinkingly. How I drive to Arise every morning: it’s a routine, I don’t really think much about it, I’m just kind of on autopilot. Routines are fine for somethings, but not everything should just be part of an unthinking routine of life.

We can also create requirements for ourselves, things that we must do. When requirements help us stay safe, they’re good. For example, washing your hands after you go to the bathroom, that’s a good requirement, something we should make ourselves do. But sometimes, we create other requirements for ourselves. “I need to… make this person happy… put in extra time at work… stay up on the latest news… respond to every message I get right away… show up early everywhere I go…” Now, making people happy and working hard and staying informed and being communicative and being on time are all good things. But when we make these good things requirements, they can become dangerous.

We can take good ideals and make them idols. We can find ourselves valuing good habits more than the good life that they’re intended to create. And so we need to be wary of requirements. When they serve life, they’re good. But if they overshadow their purpose, we need to extend grace to ourselves and remember that we can’t possible do everything perfectly all the time.

Some of you really need to hear this today: you’re putting too many requirements on yourself and you need to rest in the grace that God gives you rather than trying to control your life. God loves you because of who He made you to be, regardless of what you’ve done in your life, good or bad. And He most deeply desires that you follow Him—not that you live a perfect life. Because Jesus already did that for you. So take a deep breath and give yourself grace with your requirements.

The third kind of habit that we can form lays between routines and requirements—and they’re what we’re calling liturgies in this series. A liturgy is a habit—a regular routine or practice—that points you toward God. A liturgy is something you do on a regular basis, but it’s something you do intentionally, it’s not just on autopilot. A liturgy is also something that you should do—kind of like a requirement—but within which there is a lot of grace for when you inevitably mess up. Liturgies take seriously what Paul says to us in 2 Corinthians 9(8 NKJV), that God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. You’re doing the things—the good works—but there’s grace too.

So, if a routine is an unthinking habit and a requirement is a mandatory habit, a liturgy is an intentionally grace-filled habit. And externally, each kind of habit can look similar. You can drive to work as a routine, a requirement, or a liturgy. What matters is your orientation: why and how you’re doing what you’re doing. Because there’s a world of difference for your life and for your soul when we’re intentionally grace-filled in what we say and do each day.

Alright, so if we should pay attention to the ordinary things in life because God is concerned about them and the Church has used ordinary things to proclaim the Good News of Jesus and because (really functionally) our habits make a difference in our daily lives, what do with the waking up? What should we keep in mind as begin new things? What can a liturgy of waking up every morning look like? Here, I have two suggestions for you:

First, remember your baptism. Wait a minute, Jacob, what does baptism have to do with waking up? Well, in the same way that waking up each morning begins our days, historically, baptism marks the beginning of our life of following King Jesus. Baptism—the washing of water the demonstrates our entry into the family of God—marks beginnings. Jesus began His public work on earth with His baptism (you can read about that in Mark 1). Likewise, in Galatians (3.26-27), Paul tells us that our baptisms begin our life of following Jesus: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

Baptism is beginning—it’s like waking up. And so one simple, easy way to practice the liturgy of waking is by remembering your baptism. Now, if you were baptized as an infant or young child, you might need some assistance with this—thank God for cameras. Whatever the case, you can remember your baptism in many ways—by recalling your own baptism when you see others baptized, by celebrating it, perhaps annually, and—if and when you’re fearful or frustrated by what life is throwing at you—by bringing it to mind as a sign of your new beginning in Jesus. Remember your baptism.

My second suggestion is to make waking up a moment with God. Make the moment you wake (or, if you wake slowly, perhaps your first conscious moment) time with God. This can be really easy: a simple prayer, reading a Bible verse on your phone, keeping a devotional on your bedside table, or just spending a moment in thanksgiving for another night of rest and day of life. This seems simple, but it can be transformative for your waking.

As you might know, I’ve been struggling with mental health (and physical health) problems the last couple of years. And as a result, several months ago I experienced a serious period of insomnia. I couldn’t fall asleep and when I did, I’d wake up in a panic just a few minutes later. I tried over-the-counter sleeping meds, my doctor prescribed me something stronger—and still, I was having major problems falling asleep and staying asleep. Now, I’m not going to act like I’m cured from this—I wish I was, but some nights are still tough. But one of the absolute best habits that I’ve developed from this is using my moments of wakefulness—whether in the middle of the night, early in the morning, or just when my alarm goes off—to pray. It took some time, but when I wake up, I pray. It’s the first thing I do, even before my eyes open. I just talk to God. I thank Him for another day. I thank Him for rest. I pray for my family. I pray for you guys. I wake up praying. And let me tell you, it makes a huge difference. Because not only do I not worry so much about my sleep, but it helps me begin my day by talking to God and bringing Him my cares and concerns.

Now, I hope—I pray—that you don’t have to start your days like I do. But let me encourage you—let me challenge you: whatever waking up looks like for you, make it a moment with God. It doesn’t have to be long or formal or mandatory. But give waking up with God an intentional, grace-filled try this week.

And that’s it—that’s what the liturgy of waking can look like. Just one, small, seemingly boring part of your day—a part that you can make a little change to and make even more meaningful, purposeful, and significant. God loves you and He’s always with you. And sometimes all we need to do in order to recognize His presence is to take note of the grace He offers us in the little, daily things of life—like waking up. God is forming you into a new people—and the place of that formation is in the small moments of your life. Are you ready—are you willing—to journey into the ordinary with Him?