Practice Makes Perfect

Hi friends, I know it has been a while since anything has been posted here.  So, I thought it was time.  Last month I wrote an article for The Scroll that I wanted to share with you.  Unfortunately, we never ended up publishing the November issue.  So, here is that article:

“Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ... if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” -1 John 4:11-12

    It has been kind of an exciting week at our house.  Our daughter, Anastasia, took her first steps.  They were the clumsy, half-falling/ half-moving forward type that all babies take when they first make the switch from crawling to walking, but we are enjoying it nonetheless.  The excitement in her face, the ways she falls into us at the end of her short journey, all of it wonderful!

    It has us thinking about the first time Josiah walked as well.  Just as clumsily and unsteady.  You would not know it now though.  In fact, his default mode of movement now is to run or climb from place to place.  Those clumsy steps his sister takes?  In the distant past for him.

    All of this makes me think of that idiom, ‘practice makes perfect.’  Of course, we know that this is not entirely true.  While Josiah has practiced his walking/ running, and Anastasia will as well, they are not perfect, nor will they ever be.  Even I trip sometimes and I have 30 more years of experience at this walking thing than them.  But, even so, there is this sense in life that practice builds things into our lives in a way that they become almost intuitive.  They become second nature to us, things that we do not even think about all that much.

    I think that this applies to our spiritual lives as well.  I read this week how Mother Theresea required the nuns who worked with her in Calcutta to stop their work three times a day for an hour of prayer.  When one thinks about the work that they did, how could they not stop and pray?!?!?!?  There is no way they could have done that work of caring for the sickest of the sick, the poorest of the poor, without having themselves firmly rooted in God and God’s Spirit’s work in their life.  But their practice of prayer gave them the strength, the conviction, and the compassion to continue in their work, to love people as well as they could.

    We are not necessarily involved in works of compassion to the extent of the Sisters of Mercy, but our calling is no different than theirs.  I read this week where someone said, ‘if the gift of the Christian life is to be loved fully by God, the calling of the Christian life is to love well.’  God has given us a precious gift of love in his son, Jesus Christ.  Our calling then, is to take that gift of love, and to share it - in love of God, in love of others, and in love of self- the person God has made us to be.  However, if we are not people who practice our faith, we are people who will not grow and learn either.  Anastasia will stumble for a while, but she will learn, with our help and support, and soon she will be just as fast as her brother!  Our spiritual journeys are similar.  We must be people of devotion and prayer.  We must be people of worship and alms-giving.  These must be part of our weekly and daily practice.  If not, we will simply stumble, trip, and fall through this life as well.

    Perfection is a difficult word when we are talking about spirituality.  The truth is none of us will ever be perfect.  We will stumble, we will make mistakes, we will fail to respond faithfully.  But God’s love is perfect, and God’s perfect love resides within us, and so we must continually seek to know that love more fully that we too may grow and be changed by it.  As we continue to live a faithful life, as we continue to practice the faithful life, a life marked by love of God, others, and self, God’s love is perfected in us more and more.  When we slow down, when we make the space for God in our lives, when we practice our faith, we know more of God’s love for us, and we know more of who we are as God’s children.  The practice of our faith rooted in the Spirit gives us the strength, conviction, and compassion to love well.  We are ready to love others more fully and more authentically in ways that our world desperately needs.