Pursuing Veritas

This post originally served as a message at Arise Church

In this commencement speech to the 2014 class at the University of Texas, Admiral William McRaven had a simple message: if you want to change the world, start by making your bed. If you make your bed, you accomplish a task, which can lead to the completion of other tasks, and so that by the end of the day, making the bed will lead to the accomplishment of many tasks. Making the bed also reinforces the idea that little things matter in life. If you want to change the world, start by making your bed.

It’s good advice. Unless, of course, you don’t make your bed in the morning. Weigh in here for me—raise your hand if you never make your bed? Who makes their bed only when company may see it? Who regularly makes their bed? Who always makes their bed and is appalled by everyone else’s anarchy today?

Beyond the power of accumulative accomplishment, the Admiral’s main point in challenging us to make our beds is that little things make a big difference. Making the bed might not seem that significant to you—and, in fact, it might not be, and that’s fine. But, the Admiral is saying, making your bed could be a big deal because it could offer big returns. And if something so small could be such a significant win for you, you’d be foolish to let that opportunity slip through your fingers just because you couldn’t take a minute every morning to make your bed.

That’s a lesson worth taking to heart: there are small things that can make a big difference in our lives. Or, to put it another way, there are small, seemingly insignificant moments in everyday life that can transform us. And we’re just beginning a series called The Liturgy of the Ordinary where we’re examining these intentional, grace-filled habits that point us toward God. Last week, we talked about waking up: how we can make even the first moments of the days a moment with God. And today, we’re thinking about what happens right after we wake up: making the bed.

Now, if you’re not a bed maker—or like me, can’t make the bed because there’s still someone in it when you get up in the morning—don’t get discouraged here. Because making the bed is really just part of what’s going on. The real focus of our conversation today is what you do in the mundane moments after you wake up. Because we all have post-waking liturgies, routines that we have for after we’re awake.

After I wake up, for example, I quietly walk past our kids’ room and downstairs to our kitchen, where I get a drink of water and take some morning medications. Then, I’m off to the bathroom where I prepare myself in various ways for the day. Then it’s time for some morning rituals: doing my Bible reading plan on my phone, posting a “good morning and welcome to another day where” message on social media, reading the Daily Office (a set of prayers), checking my calendar, seeing if any urgent emails came in, and responding to text messages that I didn’t get to the day before. Then I get dressed and get Bree up, dressed, and fed. That’s the morning—that’s almost every morning. These are the things that shape the rhythm of my day. Your morning habits may look a bit different from mine, but we all have them: things we do every day (or most days) as part of getting ready for the day.

Now, you probably didn’t notice it because it’s supremely boring, but there’s actually a really intentional habit I just described, something that I specifically do before other things. Any guesses as to what that is? It’s the glass of water. I make myself drink a glass of water before I get on my phone in the morning. Why? Because even though I’m reading the Bible and praying with my phone before I do other things, that glass of water is my pushback against the false urgency and immediacy of my phone. That glass of water is how I intentionally resist going straight to my phone first thing in the morning.

Because a while back, I realized that I’d wake up, go to my phone, and never look back for the rest of the day. And even if I could justify what I was doing on my phone, I had slowly built the habit of never being without it from literally the moment I woke up until I went to sleep. It was like some sick parody of Psalm 5.3: In the morning, O Phone, you will hear my voice; in the morning, I will order my life around you and eagerly watch you.

Now, our technology can be immensely beneficial in many ways. But what I want you to see here is the importance of paying attention to the little unthinking habits that we’ve created for ourselves. You don’t wake up in a vacuum every morning, you don’t get ready for your day by intentionally making dozens of small choices. You just get up and get ready. And what we need to realize is that those little unthinking habits of our mornings powerfully shape who we are. And what I want us to do is develop the willingness to stop and reflect on what those little unthinking habits are doing to us. Because, as Tish Warren Harrison writes, “Most of what shapes our life and culture works ‘below the mind’—in our gut, in our loves.” (LitOrd, 29)

Take a moment to reflect on your day so far today: what were the little things “below your mind” that you did to get ready? When the last time you thought about why your morning routine is the way it is? Because if we don’t stop to pay attention to our loves, to what’s driving us, we’re going to be driven by whatever the world wants of us, rather than what God has for us. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In 2 Timothy (1.7 ESV), an early follower of Jesus named Paul wrote this: For God gave us not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. Listen to that again: For God gave us not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. What is driving your daily habits? What is dictating the way you start your day? Is it fear? Fear of the world? Fear of missing out?

I tend to think that we’re an increasingly FOMO culture—we’re terrified of missing out on the latest and greatest information or experiences. We wake up and we go and go and go, driven by our fear of missing out, driven by a desire to be fulfilled, driven by a desire to be entertained—and rarely, if ever, stopping to think about if this is how we should live our lives. Rarely stopping to recognize that we should be living in God’s power, in love, and in self-control. What spirit are you living in with the little unthinking habits of your life? What’s shaping your life?

I think this guy named Jesus of Nazareth can be a good example for us here. You see, contrary to the image that you might have in your head, Jesus was engaged and involved in His world. He didn’t reject the culture or the people of His day. He met with anyone and everyone: occupying soldiers, broken families, inebriated partiers, distressed mothers, arrogant religious leaders, prostitutes, overanalyzers, skeptics, normal people trying to go about their days, crooks, and misfits. Jesus spent time with everyone. He ate and drank with everyone. He extended honor and grace to everyone. So much so that religious people of His day criticized Him for not being separate enough from the world around Him. If Jesus were alive today, I wouldn’t be surprised if He had an iPhone and rooted for the Bears. Jesus would be in our world, He’d be a part of things the way that you and I are.

BUT Scripture tells us that Jesus lived very intentionally. Earlier this year, as I was reading through the Gospels—the four accounts of Jesus’ life that are found in the Bible—I was struck by how often Jesus prayed. And I don’t mean examples of prayers that Jesus prayed—I mean how often they mention that Jesus began His day with prayer or ended His day with prayer or slipped away to pray when He could have been doing literally anything else. Luke 5(16) says, But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray…. Mark 1(35) tells us, And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed…. Similarly, Matthew (14.23a) says, And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray…. And again, Luke (6.12) notes that, In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God…. Again and again and again, we hear that Jesus took time to withdraw and pray. And so I think that were Jesus around today, it’s safe to say that He would be similarly intentional with the habits that shaped His life.

I think Jesus would still focus on loving God and loving people through all of His daily actions and habits. He would still take seriously the command given in Deuteronomy 6(4-9): Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. Do you hear that? Commands not just to think about God from time to time, but commands thoroughly integrated into who you are and how you live.

Deuteronomy continues: You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Following God is never just something in your head or for Sunday mornings: it’s pervasive, seeping even into the formative practices that make up our daily lives: how we talk, how we walk, how we sleep, and how we rise. The writer of Deuteronomy got it and Jesus echoed it. What we do, how we live, even in the mundane moments after we wake up, reveal and shape what we truly love and value and worship.

So, how are you with making your bed? What are your unthinking morning habits? Do you set your phone aside? Are you okay with a little boredom? Can you find God in your mundane moments?

Maybe you don’t know because you haven’t given much thought to the little unthinking habits of your day-to-day life. And that’s fine. But if that’s you, let me give you something to do this week: pay attention to your habits. There are several ways you can do this. You could do what I did a couple months ago and take a couple weeks to track your habits. And I don’t mean the things that show up on your calendar daily or weekly—the boring little habits and liturgies that you’ve formed.

Alternatively, you could take a day and record what you do in great detail. I’ve found that if you do this, it’s helpful to stop a couple times a day (like at lunch or after dinner) and record, “I did this, then this, then this…” rather than trying to keep track of what you’re doing as you’re doing it. (Also, if you do that, then your record of what you’re doing involves a lot of “I took the trash out, and then I wrote it down” notes.)

Or maybe more obtainable would be setting up your screen time tracking on your phone and paying attention to that. When a small group that Hayley and I are a part of read Liturgy of the Ordinary several months ago, that’s something some of us did. We looked at how long we were spending on our phones and how often we were picking them up and then setting goals to being more intentional with our phones based on that. Whatever and however you do this, I challenge you to pay close attention to your habits this week. You can’t be intentional with your habits until you know what your habits are, so start there.

You could also pay attention to habits and liturgies when you encounter them elsewhere. Habits are like cars. I’m sure you’ve experienced this: you’re looking to get a new car or know someone who got a new car and suddenly, you see that car everywhere. You’d never noticed it before, but now that you’re aware of it, you see it everywhere! Well, that doesn’t just apply to green Kia Souls and gray Ford Escapes, it also applies to habits and liturgies. Once you start looking for them, you’ll see them everywhere.

What are the little things that happen at work everyday? How do you approach mundane things at school? How do you shop? What are the things throughout your life that, if you didn’t do them, you feel like something was missing? Or, what are your habits when you attend church? Do you run in and run out and not talk to people? Where do you sit? Why do you sit there? The list goes on.

You can also consider one area of your life where you can make a small change this week. What’s one thing—it could be big or small—that you’ve been wanting to do differently? Do it. Make the change. Start that habit! You get out of your liturgies what you put into them, so get investing this week. You won’t transform everything all at once. But you’ll get things going.

I’ve seen signs like this from time to time: “Everyone wants a revolution. No one wants to do the dishes.” And that’s right. We all want to make a change and see immediately results. But revolutionary changes begin with small steps—so take your first step this week. Take that walk. Read that chapter. Set that alarm. Eat that healthy meal. Have that conversation. Make your bed. Pray that prayer. Whatever it is, begin. Because once you begin, you can do it again. And then again. And again. Until you’ve learned that new, slow, repetitive rhythm that can make all the difference.

Because in the end, your ordinary liturgies aren’t just about making changes in your life. In the same way that making the bed isn’t just about order or cleanliness, the point of any liturgy of the ordinary is to habituate ourselves into rhythms of life and faith where we can experience God and what He’s intended for us. As we do things again and again, it’s not just to do those things—it’s because we can find God in them.

And that’s it—that’s what the liturgy of making the bed can look like. Taking time to be purposefully intentional with one little change we want to make, one little unthinking part of our day that suddenly takes on greater significance. 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 making the bed. 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 to journey into the ordinary with Him?