Dear Church,
What grounds you in a storm? What helps you find your footing when everything under you is shifting?
I’m a believer in small habits; I think the things that become steady and automatic in our life often become the most powerful forces. They shape who we are at all times, like little rivers cutting patterns and pathways in our souls over the years. In challenging times, even when the rest of the landscape has changed, those rivers still run because their pathways are well-worn.
Spiritual Disciplines are the practices that keep us connected to God and to one another, and they are the heart of Christian habits. Some are widely practiced, like prayer, worship, and reading scripture, but others are less common, or they are not commonly thought of as Spiritual Disciplines, like frugality or secrecy.
We will spend the next six Sundays exploring the Spiritual Disciplines in our new worship series, A Strong Spirit in Troubled Times: The Practices that Sustain Us. Each week our podcast and live worship will be focused around one discipline, with sermon, music, and prayers centered on that theme. We’ll skip some of the more obvious, traditional disciplines and delve into a few you probably haven’t tried, at least not intentionally, and we’ll pay particular attention to the ways that God might use these disciplines to sustain us through this particular moment in history.
This time when stress strains every aspect of our lives—mentally, emotionally, spiritually—is a great time for us to consider what disciplines we need in our lives. Times of great disruption are often the best times for us to set new habits and start new patterns; that’s why we call them “watershed” moments, when a new river emerges.
I hope you’ll join us for this series and find what might emerge in your own spiritual life during these trying times.
With great love,
Pastor Taylor