Remembering Hearts

I left my wallet on a coffee shop table the other day and only realized it after scouring through my room for 30 minutes. Luckily a kind employee picked it up and kept it safe for me. I nearly left my credit card attached to the bill at a restaurant the next night. I don’t know about you, but I am so quick to forget.

I’ve realized too this past week that my forgetfulness travels much deeper than simply “where’s my wallet?” As I step out of my normal routine, my remembrance of the Lord falls away all too easily. My heart is prone to wander.

A few years back, I picked up a book called “Prayers for Summertime.” It was a modernized rendition of the Book of Common Prayer – a widely used compilation of prayers, Psalms, and hymns that the early church used as a way to keep themselves oriented towards the Lord through daily, weekly, monthly and yearly rhythms. It’s a very liturgical practice and one that I had never really engaged in before.

There’s a morning, midday, evening and nighttime set of prayers that you go through every day. As I picked up the practice, my life didn’t drastically change, there was no thunder and lightning moment, but I began to notice something changing in my heart. It was subtle and slow, but there was movement.

As the practice began to habituate, I found that I was looking forward to those four prayers throughout my day. They functioned as a stop sign, a speed bump, a slowdown – a reminder – of what is in fact the Main Thing. I didn’t need to go be a monk in the hillside and never talk to another soul again, I didn’t need to quit my job or flip my life upside down, all it entailed was instituting these short 5-7 minute intentional pauses throughout my day – in the same way the early church did two millennia ago.

Biblically, we are charged with a call to remembrance. If we’re called to something in particular it usually means we are naturally bent towards the opposite. Our default, as humans, is what’s going on in our present moment. You’re in an argument at work, suddenly that’s the only thing in the entire world that matters.

In the Psalms, we learn that David prayed seven times a day. “I will praise you seven times a day because all Your regulations are just” (Psalm 119:164). The Israelites in the Old Testament wandered around the wilderness for 40 years because of one simple oversight – they forgot. They forgot about all the ways that God had provided for them in exonerating them out of Egypt, the plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea, the manna, the water, the very Presence of the Lord filling the Tabernacle. They forgot — resulting in their hearts turning away from God.

I recall this story and think to myself, what were these people thinking? How could you have Wonder-Bread fall from the sky and forget about God? But then I see myself asking similar questions about whether God’s real or if He’s with me, even in light of all the beautiful ways He’s met me and provided for me in the past – I forget.

Depending on your personal church experience, liturgical practices may bring up positive or negative feelings. Maybe it’s something you’ve never tried. Wherever you’re at, that’s OK. What I want to make sure is understood is that there are no practices that save us. We are saved by faith through the grace of God (Ephesians 3). Liturgical practices are meant to serve as reminders. An easy way to fight against legalism regarding our practices is to habitually recall the why behind what we’re doing. Why am I having a quiet time every morning? Because I want to know God more today. Knowing why you root yourself somewhere enables you to weed out the distracting narratives that try to pull you away from your why. 

God charges us to practice remembrance because He knows our hearts are quick to wander. I want to encourage you, friends, find and institute practices that daily reorient and point your heart back to God. It could be something as simple as setting a timer at 1:30 P.M. and taking a five-minute walk around your office with the goal of saying one prayer to the Lord and gazing at a tree or two as a way to be thankful for God’s creative power. It could be the Book of Common Prayer, a quiet time in the morning, whatever you decide, stick to it, work it into the rhythm of your day. Let’s together answer the call of remembrance so as to collectively as a body of believers keep our hearts pointed to God.