Theological Journal 2020 January 3

Do you know what a “rule of life” is? It’s a way of life ordered to maximize our experience of God and facilitate our growth toward maturity in faith.


Everybody has one, you know. A “rule of life,” that is. We all order our lives to maximize what we believe we wasn’t out of it. Some are more intentional about this than others. Some would even claim they don’t have any such thing. But whether we think through the shape we want our lives to have or simply fall into it by “going with the flow,” our lives inevitably assume some ordered form.


It’s easiest to see the shape we give to at least certain parts of our lives by reflecting on the things we do regularly. Eating, getting up and going to bed, setting aside certain times for doing our laundry and doing it in a certain way, and many other things we regularly do we tend to do in regular ways, that is, ordered.

The monastic movement in the early church was a way of life the church ordered for those willing to undertake it. Times of prayer and worship, rising to going to bed, working, eating, silence and speaking were ordered in detailed ways.


That’s enough, I hope, to give you an idea of what I mean by a “rule of life.” The practice of reflecting on, praying over, and setting a “rule” or order of life has been revived in recent decades by Christians seeking to grow deeper in faith and failing to find help in doing that in their traditions of worship and church.


So I want to spend a few days on opening up this practice to you. I’ve said enough for today. Your home work assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to identify some patterns and regularities in your life. Again, we all have them whether we believe it or not. The most interesting ones are those you have some discretion in establishing. That is, they are not imposed by something or someone external to you, hours of work or school for example, but things you may choose or not to do and how you do them. See if you can identify some of these kinds of “rules” in your life.