Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

by Tish Harrison Warren

Though the day begins in darkness, God is still at work, growing crops, healing wounds, giving rest, protecting, guarding, mending, redeeming.15 We drop out of consciousness, but the Holy Spirit remains at work. In his brief theology of sleep, Scottish pastor John Baillie writes that in Christ, we “wake up better men than when we went to sleep.”16 If it is hard for us to believe that God is at work in us and in the world even while we sleep, it reveals who we truly think is the mover and maker of our lives and spiritual health. Baillie speaks of God’s unlimited, constant activity in the world and in us: We habitually suppose ourselves to be more the masters of our spiritual development than we actually are. . . . If some of the processes that are necessary for our physical well-being go on more advantageously in sleep than in waking life, because the will relaxes its too despotic control, why should not the same be true of some of the processes that advance our spiritual well-being?17