Faith in Daily Life...at home

As I write this it is about four degrees outside and I cannot imagine a better place to be than at home, snug and warm. During these long, cold winter months we have ample opportunity to be home. While we are cooped up, some like to hunker down with a book and shut out the world while others surf the web and dream of escapes to warmer climates, or anywhere else. This process leads many to a crazed state of mind we term “Cabin Fever.”

The idea of being confined by space or time is something that runs contrary to our whole social structure. Imagine if this was intentional, a cloistered time. What would God’s purpose be in that, I wonder?

In her book, The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris wrote about her discovery when taking an intentional monastic vacation away from the world with a Benedictine order of monks. She was awestruck by a life that focused on the values of stability, silence, and humility that we so desperately need, yet relentlessly avoid. Taking the time to read the bible “at home” now meant she let the scriptures speak to her in new ways, “working the earth of her heart.” Learning much about simplicity, patience, forgiveness, the value of community, and the responsibility of freedom in the place one lives, forced her to realize the power of spirituality and the beneficial change it can effect - that "love can be the center of all things, if only we will keep it there."

As we are “cloistered” in our winter dens, I invite you to explore how God might be calling you to live out your faith at home. Let God into your home and let his love be “the center of all things.” Martin Luther was a huge advocate for faith development in the home and wrote the Small Catechism specifically to be taught in the home; spouse to spouse, parent to child, sibling to sibling. Faith instruction is not meant for church alone, but wherever two or three are gathered in God’s name.

Almost all of us recently spent some time over the holidays at home with our families. So how did you let the time go by? Playing games, watching TV and eating? Let us use this time faithfully, and share in telling the story of Christ’s birth and what that means for our lives. The good news is we probably have three more months of being cooped up together, so let’s take the time God has given us to grow in faith and in fervent love towards God and one another.

Blessings to you as you continue to share your faith at home.