Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

by Tish Harrison Warren

Biblically, there is no divide between “radical” and “ordinary” believers.

it is merely a Christian practice,

The Reformers taught that a farmer may worship God by being a good farmer and that a parent changing diapers could be as near to Jesus as the pope. This was a scandal.

The Christian faith teaches that all work that is not immoral or unethical is part of God’s kingdom mission.

It’s easy for me to assume that the parts of my vocation that God cares about are the parts that I like.

Each kind of work is therefore its own kind of craft that must be developed over time, both for our own sanctification and for the good of the community.

Therefore, holiness itself is something like a craft—not

We learn the craft of holiness day by day in the living of a particular life.

We are part of God’s big vision and mission—the redemption of all things—through the earthy craft of living out our vocation, hour by hour, task by task.

Our frantic work lives are disconnected from the rhythms of the seasons or day and night.

time is not mine. It does not revolve around me. Time revolves around God—what

If we believe that church is merely a voluntary society of people with shared values, then it is entirely optional.

Those who were winning at life saw no need for this life-disrupting Savior.

The people of God are the losers, misfits, and broken. This is good news—and humiliating.

We work out our faith with these other broken men and women around us in the pews. It’s lackluster.

New Testament scholar Ben Witherington points out that it was the church, not Starbucks, that created coffee culture.4 Coffee was first invented by Ethiopian monks—the

Though it may seem counterintuitive, enjoyment takes practice.

Rest takes practice.

My disordered sleep reveals a disordered love, idols of entertainment or productivity.

this public health epidemic is indicative of a spiritual crisis—a culture of disordered love and disordered worship. We disdain limits.

many of us resist sleep for other reasons. We’ve developed routines of restlessness in our daily lives.

But in facing the reality of death, we learn how to live rightly.

Yielding to sleep confesses this reality: a confession that is countercultural and revolutionary. We are not sufficient; we need a caretaker. And

We are prone to embrace a faith that is full of adrenaline, excitement, and activity. But we have to learn together to approach a Savior who invites the weary to come to him for rest.

we “wake up better men than when we went to sleep.”

God cares about sleep.