Listenings: Spiritual Life in the Whirlwind

Evelyn Underhill’s fifth question and response deals with how to have an authentic spiritual life in the midst of unceasing activity, busyness, etc.  So many were saying that they found no opportunities to cultivate their relationship with God.  We can only imagine how she might view this nearly 90 years later!

She began her response by saying that the saints of the ages did not live as leisurely as we often think.  We actually caricature them and imagine that they had all the time in the world to devote to God.  But a closer and realistic reading of their lives shows that they faced the same time-management issues that we do.

As I have read the lives of the saints, I have discovered that Underhill is correct.

And then she wrote, “what is asked of us is not necessarily a great deal of time devoted to what we regard as spiritual things, but the constant offering of our wills to God, so that the practical duties which fill most of our days can become part of His order and be given spiritual worth” (p. 131-132).

The spiritual life is, at the root, a conscious life.  As Henri Nouwen has put it, a life in which nothing is thought, said, or done apart from God.

The Puritans had a phrase for it: “every moment is a God moment.”  Existentially, that’s true regardless.  But it only becomes true spiritually when we devote these moments to God.  It’s part of the Romans 12:1 experience.

Some of the saints (including John Wesley) actually trained themselves to enter into each new moment with a spirit which offered that experience or event to God.  For example, John Wesley entered into new moments asking, “How can I use this time to bring glory to God?”

Immediately, the spiritual life is “everywhere” and it includes “everything.”  And ironically, we do not have to find the time for a spiritual life; the time finds us!  And in this way, the whole of life becomes devotional.