Finding Life-Giving Rhythms in Our Days, Weeks, Years, and Lives

Christians by nature are a profoundly rhythmic people.  So were their Jewish ancestors.  Perhaps, it is just because nature itself is rhythmic.

When God established the heavens and earth, He imbedded rhythms into the created order. All throughout creation, we find patterns of productivity and rest.   Plants, animals, fungi, and even bacteria have circadian rhythms, biological processes that display an oscillation of activity over a 24-hour period.  If we look further outward, we find that the earth itself experiences rhythms due to its rotations around its bent axis and around the sun, which results in periods of day and night and in seasons throughout the year, seasons which rotate between more productive times and more quiet times.

So it is not surprising that like the Creation itself, followers of the Way, find themselves living into life-giving rhythms of productivity and Sabbath, as well as rhythms of prayer and work; joy and lament; feasting and fasting; celebrating and abstaining; community and solitude; and activism and stillness.

For centuries, followers of the Way, and their Jewish forbearers, have structured their weeks in response to God’s call to be co-creators with Him for six days of week and on the seventh day to rest and worship and delight in Him.

They have also structured their days so as to integrate regular prayer into their work, eating, rest, and play.

Since the earliest times, followers of the Way have also structured their years around feast days and celebrations – days throughout the year that help them regularly walk through the life and death of Jesus Christ and the early days of the Church as the Good News of Jesus began to spread.

In addition to all this, followers of the Way have naturally found themselves ebbing and flowing into different seasons of the spiritual life as they have journeyed through the ups and downs of life.  As such, they have learned to engage different rhythms of discipleship in each season (for more on this, read here).

Perhaps, this idea of having rhythms in one’s walk with Jesus is a new concept to you.  Or perhaps you are familiar with it, but it has become stale or rote.  One way or the other, this Website is for you, to help you explore what it might look like to incorporate life-giving rhythms into your faith walk with Jesus.  For help creating a Rule of Life, read here.