Feasts & Spiritual Practices: How the Ordinary Things Change You
How many meals in life do you remember?
I was in a ministry training recently where Pastor Scott Sauls (a Nashville pastor) asked that question to a group of us: how many meals in life do you remember?
If you’re like me, you likely can recall special meals with loved ones on beaches, in obscure dives and fancy restaurants, around dining tables and on picnic blankets.
So pause and think about it: what is it about these meals that cause you to remember them?
Likely, it was an extravagant meal that left you with joy and also feeling stuffed. And while those meals are beautiful and needed, they are not the meals you have on a daily basis. Those types of meals, on a consistent basis, would likely leave you sick or dead, right? Feasts and buffets are not sustainable.
What is sustainable? What sustains your life?
The common, normal, average meals.
Boiled eggs, rice and lentils, soups and salads, chicken and potatoes, yogurt and granola.
Meals can teach us alot about life, and one of those most important lessons is:
The ordinary is life sustaining. The ordinary is life changing.
Just like the normal meals are what sustain and impact our lives, the average (and sometimes boring) habits in our lives are changing, forming, and shaping us as children of God (or something else). All meals are not feasts; all of life is not spiritual mountaintop experiences. Life consists of the small, easily-forgotten everyday decisions made both consciously and unconsciously. We are formed by the mundane that enriches the extravagant and we are prepared for the mountaintops by journeying through the valleys of the shadow of death.
“All meals are not feasts; all of life is not spiritual mountaintop experiences....We are formed by the mundane that enriches the extravagant and we are prepared for the mountaintops by journeying through the valleys of the shadow of death.”
-Jeremy Sullivan Height
It’s been said that we do not rise to the levels of our hopes, but rather we fall to the levels of habits. In times of stress and difficulty we will turn to the things that we always turn to. Our habits in the normal times are our habits all of the time.
And so it is important to develop habits and practices and rhythms today in order to prepare you for the days and weeks and years ahead of you. As Christians, no more important habits exist than our spiritual practices which inform all of who we are as daughters and sons of God.
Spiritual habits include:
Journaling. This ongoing practice can be used for times of prayer, reflection, gratitude, or processing the challenges of daily life.
Prayer. Both in moments alone and in group settings, prayer recenters us towards the heart of God and through God’s heart towards those around us in the world.
Stillness and Solitude. It is both hard and necessary to spend time alone, away from the noise and busy-ness of life. Allow yourself to sit and be bored. Pursue quiet and peace both externally and internally.
Sabbath. Spend time every week not working. Spend time doing things (or by not doing things) which bring you joy and glorify God. Slow down and rest. If Jesus spent time alone and slowing down, then we need to as well.
Exercise. Our spiritual lives are not divorced from our physical lives. We are holistic beings. So spend time outside and moving, whatever that looks like for you in this season of life.
Bible study. Spend time in God’s Word. Every. Single. Day.
These (amongst other) spiritual practices can develop the rhythms of life that you need in order to thrive as a human and sustain yourself across the highs and lows and in-betweens of life. These habits of the Christian life are the “normal meals” that sustain us and prepare us to enjoy the “feasts” that do happen from time to time.
These habits will make your life sustainable. And they will change your life too. Each of these spiritual habits will constantly mold you more and more into the image of Christ and draw you closer and closer to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is not some easy, one-size-fits-all formula, and it does take a lot of work. But spiritual growth and human flourishing happens through the common, normal, average choices you make day in and day out.
What are your habits in life? And who are they forming you into? You are being formed, the only variables are by what and into whom?
Repurposing the question we started with: how many spiritual breakthroughs do you remember in life?
Very likely those moments were informed and cultivated in the soil of every day habits and spiritual practices that both prepare us for mountaintop experiences and ensure that those experiences do not leave us unchanged.
Choose change.
Choose sustainability.
Choose intentionality.
Choose ordinary.
Want to go deeper? Here are some book and podcasts recommendations related to this conversation:
