One of the occupational hazards of leading a class at church is that occasionally the material you are teaching turns around and starts teaching you. This feels slightly unfair, but here we are.
Our recent Sunday morning class based on the book How God Changes Your Brain was a wonderful success. We spent several weeks talking about the connection between our brains and our spiritual lives—how prayer, gratitude, compassion, worship, and even the way we think about God can shape us over time.
I loved our conversations, and I think we all learned a lot. But one idea has really stuck with me: what we practice, we strengthen. Which brings me to our Thursday online class, the Spiritual Practices Lab.
The Lab is going great so far, and I hope the people participating are getting something out of it, because I definitely am. There is something about having to lead other people through spiritual practices that makes it much harder to say, “Yes, prayer and reflection are very important,” and then immediately go answer 14 emails, make three lists, start a load of laundry, remember something I forgot to put on one of the lists, and call that a spiritual practice.
Leading the Lab is making me actually practice the practices. And then Mary and Martha showed up.
During our week on Lectio Divina, we used the familiar story from Luke 10 in which Martha is busy serving while Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens. I have heard this story many times. I know the usual interpretations. I thought I knew what it had to say to me.
But that is one of the beautiful things about Lectio Divina: instead of trying to figure out what you are supposed to learn from a passage, you slow down, listen, and notice what catches your attention.
And this time, I heard something I needed to hear: Emily, you do not have to do everything yourself.
Oh hey, Jesus, that you?
I am very good at being Martha. I can organize the meal, make the list, send the reminder, worry about whether everyone has what they need, notice the thing nobody else noticed, and then become mildly irritated that nobody noticed how much noticing I was doing. But sitting with that story helped me realize that Jesus wasn’t asking Martha to care less. He was inviting her to put down the burden of believing that everything depended on her. And I realized how often I carry that same burden.
I don’t have to do everything. I don’t have to fix everything. I don’t have to anticipate every problem. I don’t even have to be productive every minute of the day. There is a time to serve, organize, plan, answer the email, make the dinner, and get things done. But there is also a time to sit at Jesus’ feet and remember that the world continues to turn when I stop working.
Apparently, God can manage things without my constant supervision.
That realization has stayed with me, and it has made me especially grateful for the Spiritual Practices Lab. These practices aren’t about adding one more thing to our already crowded lives. They are actually helping me do the opposite. They are teaching me to slow down, pay attention, listen, and remember that God is already at work before I arrive.
That feels like the perfect continuation of what we discovered in How God Changes Your Brain. Our spiritual lives are shaped by what we repeatedly practice. Prayer, gratitude, compassion, stillness, and attention aren’t just nice ideas. Over time, they help form us into different kinds of people.
I started these classes hoping to help other people deepen their spiritual lives. It turns out God may have signed me up for the class, too. And right now, my homework seems to be this: put down the list occasionally, sit with Jesus, and remember that I don’t have to do everything on my own.
I’m working on it.
Click here if you would like to join our Spiritual Practices Lab on Thursday evenings!