Category Archives: sacred

Worldview

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May we continue the conversation?

If our daily lives are to be centered around Christ, if we are to build physical reminders of Jesus into our daily routines, if all that we are and all that we do is to be made sacred, then how does that idea expand to include the world around us? Is the world around us, the culture in which we live, also to be made sacred?

I read “Resounding Truth” and ponder this:

This book is concerned with…gaining theological discernment about music…It is concerned with how God’s truth might “sound” and “re-sound” in the world of music.

My mind begins to whirl. Should I attempt to view music through a godly perspective? Even purely instrumental music? If in this, than in what other realms should we have a godly worldview?

Literature? Politics? Art? Philosophy? Science? Technology?
Should everything be interpreted through a God-window?

I suppose that there is nothing outside of the lordship of Jesus.

I think through this a little more.

Are we asked to view everything in our world through a godly framework? Are we called by God to actively think through issues in our world, to read and listen, pray and ponder the things in our culture that are relevant in the world?

It would certainly be easier to stay focused only on my home, my daily routine.

Easier, however, is not generally what God calls us to pursue.

Paul says in Colossions 3.17:

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks for God the Father through Him.

Whatever you do. This certainly reinforces my thoughts about consciously bringing God into my daily life. This doesn’t, however, necessarily translate to God asking us to actively pursue an understanding of and engagement with our culture.

I continue to wonder and seek God in this as I move through my day.

I sit at the computer and see that I have received my Mars Hill Audio Journal in my in-box.

Mars Hill’s stated purpose is to help Christians thoughtfully engage their culture.

They make the argument (rightfully, I believe) that a layer of “Love your neighbor as yourself” is to

pay careful attention to the neighborhood: that is, every sphere of human life where God is either glorified or despised, where neighbors are either edified or undermined. Therefore, living as disciples of Christ pertains not just to prayer, evangelism, and Bible study, but also our enjoyment of literature and music, our use of tools and machines, our eating and drinking, our views on government and economics, and so on.

Considering a godly perspective on technology and economics is a newer idea for me.

Paul certainly engaged the culture when he spent time in the marketplace in Athens, listening to and speaking with the philosophers of the day. (Acts 17)

As artists, my friend Kati and I have discussed this issue from the perspective of making quality art and engaging the artistic community where they are in order that art may be pervaded by Christ.

Should there be any realm of human endeavor that is not pervaded by Christ?

The host of Mars Hill says it this way:

But it is nonetheless imperative for us to be active in the culture, not because we are saved, but because we are created. Pursuing an understanding of and engagement with our culture is necessary for Christians because we must first bow to God as Creator, to thank him for the goodness that remains in his fallen creation, to live creatively, that is, in keeping with the patterns and norms he has established for creation, even as we eagerly await the advent of a new creation.

Meanwhile, life in this created sphere has meaning and value. God bestows blessings even on the unrighteous. He gives wonderful talents and abilities to those who hate the mention of his name. These blessings are what we mean by common grace: the gratuitous gifts to the just and the unjust that sustain and enrich the life shared by the wheat and the tares.

C.S. Lewis also argues that God asks us to bring Him into all branches of human thought:

If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But, as it is, a cultural life will exist outside the church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now–not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground–would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether.

I must conclude that God does, indeed, ask us to actively pursue an understanding of and engagement with our culture. As I pursue this idea of holistic living, of considering everything to be made sacred, I must go beyond the walls of my home, beyond the walls of my church.

I will keep reading and listening, praying and pondering.

Will you continue the conversation?

If you want a bit of Further Reading on this, here are two essays:
Christianity, Culture and Modern Grace
Christianity and Culture

Made Sacred

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Her Daddy and I are her sun and moon. Her world revolves around us and she depends on us to keep her life whole.

When one of us is away, she begs to know where we are and what we are doing. She loves routine, this two-year old of mine, needs to know that her Daddy and I are constant and will keep her world whole, will keep it from falling into pieces.

I, on the other hand, seem to delight in fragmenting my world. I want to divide my life into pieces.

A place for household chores and yard work and a place for reading my books.

A place for my husband and a place for my children.

A place for friends and a place for family.

Neat and separated.

For surface organization, perhaps, this brings contentment. Yet daily I willfully ignore my own Sun and Moon Who could knit my life back together into a beautiful whole. I continually forget about inviting Him into certain places of my day.

There is no joy in places of my day that do not include Christ, only weary tasking and resentment over un-acknowledged work.

How can this change? It has become such habit to separate out my day between sacred and secular.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them upon your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deut. 6.5-7)

How can I allow God to knit the secular places of my life back into the sacred?

How can the whole of my daily life be made sacred?


I am inspired by Brother Lawrence, the dishwasher:

“The time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great a tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”

Yet unlike my Eldest Child, I don’t allow God be constant, keeping my world whole. I speak as though this were my desire. I sing “in my life be lifted high” yet don’t act in physical ways to keep Him present during my chores, while reading my books, in my daily interactions with my family.

I have places. Some are sacred and some are secular.

I long for my world to be whole. For all to be made sacred.

I pray for wisdom. I seek answers and ideas. I have found a few.


The rest of the passage from Deuteronomy:

“Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.” (Deut 6.8-9)

God desires for our lives to be made wholly sacred.

He knows how forgetful we are. He knows that He created us as physical beings. He knows that we need physical and constant reminders.

Ann Voskamp shares her family’s practice of reading the Word at every meal. They eat the Bread of Life while they break bread together. Perhaps this is another layer of meaning to “do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22.19)

After all, Jesus was sharing a meal at the time.

We are just beginning to join in this sharing of Bread at mealtimes.

We try. We fail. We begin again.

We forget. We are ashamed. We begin again.

Liturgy is a foreign and almost forbidden word to us. The idea, however, intrigues me. Set times in your day for going to God. A discipline of regular prayer that keeps us rooted in the sacred at all times, in all of our places. I discovered this version of a book of Common Prayer. We have not tried this yet. Perhaps the little ones are a bit too little still.

Small changes. Little steps. Will you help? Share how God is teaching you to weave your days into a sacred whole?

We yearn and pray for all that we are and all that we do to be made sacred.