Folks who wish to be physically fit understand, or eventually come to understand, what it takes. It’s not automatic. If you want to be healthy, you have to work at it consistently.
It’s like that with a lot of things: relationships, marriage, parenting, your e-mail inbox, etc…
You get the picture.
The college kids here at the camp where I work sometimes ask me how many e-mails I typically receive or send in a day. I tell them it’s well over 50 (not counting tweets, Facebook messages or IMs). I’m sure it was a great deal more than that when I lived in the Dallas area. That always blows their minds. Kids these days, they just don’t understand e-mail.
Because so much of what I do flows through e-mail, it’s more than just communication. My inbox also functions as my to-do list. My job requires me to be out on my feet a great deal. But, when I do get the chance to sit at my computer for an extended time to catch up, the first thing I’m going to do is start working through that inbox. And, generally speaking, once I get through it, or I should say if I get through it, I have the sense that I have at least caught up with the immediate things I need to address.
Herein lies the problem. I just checked, and as I write, there are exactly 132 e-mails sitting in my inbox. That’s actually low. Last week I had a few hours to work in the office, and worked through more than a month’s worth of build-up. At the start of that project, there were over 500 e-mails in my inbox. And here’s the kicker: all of those were things I really did need to address. If not, they wouldn’t still be in there. And, whenever I have that many to work through, I inevitably come across a few that are “past their expiration date.” That is to say, that people were looking to me to answer a question or deal with an issue that is no longer relevant. I was just too busy to get back to responding. E-mail apologies are called for. Some of you have gotten one or more of those types of e-mails from me. Sorry about that.
Here’s the deal. I breathe e-mail like air. Even living on a remote mountainside in Colorado, on the outskirts of a town with a population of less than 500 people, with a job that has me running around all day, I take in and send out over 50 e-mails a day. And that’s still not enough. I still need to carve out time that is set apart to keep up with it all. And I still haven’t quite figured out how to do that.
There was one period of time, however, when I did. A number of years ago, when we were living in Lewisville, Texas, our kids attended a school up in Denton twice a week to supplement our homeschooling program. Once a week, it was my job to take the kids to school and bring them home. They were there for about three hours. It was just too short of a period of time to make it worth it for me to drive back to Lewisville or Irving while they were in class, but enough time that I needed to figure out how to get something productive done while I was there. So, I found a little coffee shop that had wireless Internet and determined that each week, for those three hours, I would work through my e-mails.
And it worked. This is the only period of time I can honestly say that I kept up. I had a healthy inbox for a whole semester!
Of course, I could have carved out the same three hours sitting in my office at church, or at home, but I didn’t. There were too many other options. Something about the space-in-time created by the constraints of that situation made it happen. It had become sacred space.
If you think that seems like a strange word to use in this context, a look at one of the general definitions of the word “sacred” on dictionary.com may help: “secured against violation, infringement, etc.”
A look at the full definition of the word yields the idea of dedication, reverence, and something that is set apart or protected for a specific, worthwhile purpose. That’s what the three hours in that coffee shop were for me. E-mail sacred space. And it worked.
Same thing for those who have disciplined themselves to work out at the gym, or go for a run at certain times each week. It’s dedicated, sacred space. And, if I’ve learned anything from my e-mail situation, it is that it doesn’t just happen. You have to create the space yourself. And you have to protect it. Otherwise it’s not really sacred.
Now let’s apply this to our spiritual health. Like my 50-plus e-mails a day, many of us think about God and regularly pray in the daily flow of our lives. Especially before a job interview, or a big test. But, this is not enough to really keep us spiritually healthy, any more than the occasional walk to the mall from a remote parking spot on a busy shopping day is going to keep you physically fit if you are spending most of your time sitting in an office. It’s just not enough.
This is where the rich, historical practice of spiritual discipline comes in. We all need to set aside sacred space to engage with God through the Scriptures, prayer and meditation. And I don’t think that physical space is necessarily the fundamental issue for us in our contemporary lives. I think the space we are most in need of for our spiritual health is time. But the two are really inseparable.
Here are just a few ideas:
Take walks. The physical constraints of your route — on the trail, in your neighborhood, around your office building, or even at the mall (not to shop, just to walk) — will create the protected time. Get a dog you’ll need to walk to help force you to do this if it will help. Use the time for prayer and meditation. Get prayers or Scripture readings on your iPod to listen to while you walk.
Got a long commute? Figure out how to protect it and make it a dedicated time for your spiritual health. Take the radio out of your car if you need to. Gasp! Or plug in your iPod and listen along with recorded Scripture readings or prayers. But remember, silence is a spiritual discipline too.
Find a local park, church, or other location out of your normal routine and set aside some time there on a regular basis. Turn off your phone. Take your Bible or prayer book.
The list of resources you might use in addition to your Bible is extensive. Chatter has recommended many over the years, but a simple Internet search will quickly yield numerous options as well. I won’t make any specific recommendations here. I’ll leave that to you.
But, remember. It doesn’t matter how many shelves of cool devotional prayer books you have if you have not created the space in your life to actually use them.
It is always a challenge to form a new habit that is out of your normal pattern, but you can do it. Eventually, if you stick with it, you’ll not know how to do without it. And you will find that God will become more real to you in the day-to-day and overall direction of your life than you ever thought possible.
You’ll find yourself fighting to protected it! It will become sacred space.
