The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction

by Justin Whitmel Earley

The first kind of prayer names a reality that is. Like Adam’s work of words in the Garden of Eden, it creates categories of meaning and names realities. This part of prayer is essential as it reminds us there are truths of the world: God is good. We are loved. To be alive is beautiful. Gratitude is the way of happiness.

The second kind of prayer is not simply naming what is but creating what can be. Just as God spoke mountains and soil into existence, so we use the words of prayer as a generative act of wishing new realities into existence.

Here we recover the two uses of prayer, naming true realities: “God, thank you for another day I did not earn. You are so generous to me.” And we are creating true realities: “Let me make something good of the world today. Let me love the world and all the people in it just like you love it.”

So we invert the purpose of work. Instead of working as a way to love and serve others, we turn work into a way to be loved and served by others. Instead of longing to hear the “Tov!” of God, we work for the “Tov!” of people.

We’re frustrated because we had no time for free time. Or we’re embarrassed because we squandered it all on free time.

There are more or less healthy ways to escape, but what I can’t escape is the desire to escape.

Building the trellis of habit is a way to acknowledge the good ways God designed us as well as the ways the fall has broken us. It is a way to craft Annie Dillard’s “net for catching days.”1 How else do we get our hands on time itself? This begins with framing our days in love, and that begins with the words of prayer.