Into the fabric of your life is part of learning to live spiritually.
You have a life. A normal life that is built with at least some of the same bricks that form the structure of everyone else’s normal life: a family, a home, a job, coworkers, friends, grocery stores, gas stations, garbage cans, doctor appointments, books to read, a lawn to mow, and maybe a dog to walk. All these ordinary bits and pieces add up to create something unique and unrepeatable: your life.
The Christian Scriptures it turns out (and this may be true of other sacred texts as well) have a knack of getting themselves caught up in the mix. If you read them often enough, you will one day find that a particular verse or phrase or word gets stuck in your head like a hook from a pop song.
Never mind if you even like the song—there it is. Never mind if the song connects in any meaningful way to a situation you’re going through—there it is. Never mind if you even understand the verse—there it is. Never mind if the verse cheers you up or bums you out—there it is.
Consider what this well-worn passage of Scripture says about Scripture:
18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates…
Notice the ordinary, common elements of life: hearts, minds, hands, foreheads, children, homes, roads, beds, doorframes, gates…nothing special or spectacular. They don’t have to be. It’s maybe for the better that they aren’t. The spiritual gets cozy with the ordinary. The Scriptures settle into the muddle and chaos of life. This is what the they are meant to do, what they will do if we just do out part and give them a chance.
