Stephen A. Macchia - Crafting a Rule of Life: An Invitation to the Well-Ordered Way

You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Psalm 16:11

T his past week, as part of my pastoral rounds, I visited two women in their eighties. Both were in separate hospitals. I saw Elly on Monday and Elizabeth on Thursday. The first was a planned visitElly has been in extended care for several months, growing ever more brittle-boned, wispy-voiced, crepe-skinned, not long for this world. The second was unscheduledElizabeth took a tumble while doing her own daily rounds of visits to the weak and the ailing. She broke her hip and was awaiting emergency surgery. She lay in the hospital bed, quite cheerful on morphine, her bluish hair impeccably neat, and looked her usual sweet, formidable self. Id give her another twenty years before shes off to the wild blue yonder.

Both are living saints. They are women of deep goodness and fierce prayer and holy mischief. Elly, only a few years ago, wrote her autobiography. Its called Counting My Blessings , which shes spent a lifetime doing. We spent our visit counting more. She is a kind of abacus of thanksgiving in flesh and blood.

Elizabeth never misses an opportunity to tell anyone in earshot about the love of God. I know shell use her forced bed confinement for this: to her, its just a brilliant ploy of divine providence to place her in arms reach of a whole phalanx of hospital patients and medical staff. By the time shes discharged, a small village will have heard the good news of great joy. I think the apostle Paul would have trouble keeping up with her.

I pay these kind of visits often enough. I have the privilege of brushing up against people like this every week. Its as if I have a hall pass to wander the gallery of saints in Hebrews 11. What gave these visits added poignancy was the book youre now holding, Steve Macchias Crafting a Rule of Life , which I was in the midst of reading. One of the many virtues of this book is how gloriously free it is from mere theorizing and armchair speculation. Indeed, Steve earths every lesson in real life, his own and others, including brilliant vignettes of historical personages to illustrate the spiritual values he discusses in each chapter.

He could have used Elly and Elizabeth.

Which is exactly the point. Steve, in these pages, has lovingly rendered a tremendous service to the church. He unfolds the deep-down stuff that lies beneath the lives of people like that. Spiritual robustness like theirs, so tenacious and subversive and attractive, doesnt happen by accident. It doesnt happen overnight. It doesnt happen by wishing or trying.

It is a long obedience in the same direction. It is forged in the daily and tempered in the ordinary. It is a slow and steady and deliberate gathering of the years. It is a combination of keen attentivenessto God, to self, to others, to lifeand holy indifferenceto trifles, to insults, to useless distractions. It is planned, not in some goose-stepping mechanical way, but in the sense that it builds on a resolve to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of you, and to take every though captive and make it obedient to Christ.

Most of us stumble into the kingdom with nary a clue how to do this. So we thrash about, make reckless attempts, arm ourselves with slogans, goad ourselves with guilt, fail and fail and fail, and finally settle for spiritual mediocrity. Our inner lives remain cramped and musty. We resort to mere conformity, to a masquerade of piety to cover up for our lack of real Christlikeness. And when we meet an Elly or an Elizabeth, they fill us with wistfulness or shame or cynicism.

Herein lies another option: to craft a rule of life which perfectly fits your unique temperament, bent, background and passion, and which day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, decade by decade, makes God real to you in the inmost places. Thats what this book will help you do, gently, clearly, persuasively, comprehensively.

The genius of Steves approach is he makes ancient ways contemporary, personal and practical. Saint Benedict joins your daily commute. St. Augustine goes to the gym with you. George Mueller helps you reconcile your bank statement. Theres no need to live in a cave or meditate atop a pillar. The life you long to live can be fashioned from the life you already have. You just need someone like Steve to show you how.

I read this book fast to write this foreword. Now Ill read it again, slow, to heed its counsel. Lucky you: youre free to get right down to business.

Happy crafting, living saint.

Mark Buchanan
Author of The Rest of God and Your Church Is Too Safe
Blog: www.markbuchanan.net

Crafting a Personal Rule of Life

Take your everyday, ordinary lifeyour sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around lifeand place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Dont become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. Youll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Romans 12:1-2 The Message

F ix your attention on God and youll be changed from the inside out. God is the one who brings out the best of you. Thats a truth worth pursuing with our whole hearts. God lovingly invites us to pursue our shared calling as a Christian community and our unique vocation as individual disciples. There is only one Moses, one Ruth, one Peter, one James, one Johnand only one you.

We are all on a common pursuit of loving God, loving one another and loving others in Jesus name. We do so in slightly different waysreflected in the tens of thousands of denominational niches worldwidebut more importantly, we call ourselves Christian and mean it from the bottom of our hearts. Our commonality is a beautiful gift to reflect on and is our delightful inheritance. We are set apart and called to be the people of God, a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that we may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9). But even though we all live our lives in a wider community, we also find ourselves in daily pursuit of a life thats uniquely set apart for Gods distinct purposesevidenced in our personal rule of life.

Your personal rule of life is a holistic description of the Spirit-empowered rhythms and relationships that create, redeem, sustain and transform the life God invites you to humbly fulfill for Christs glory.

What do you think of when you hear the word rule? For many of us, the word has negative connotations. We are likely to think of rules as boundaries that forbid us from doing something. But a rule of life is something else. Rather than being a set of laws that forbid us to do certain things, a rule of life is a set of guidelines that support or enable us to do the things we want and need to do.

A rule of life allows us to clarify our deepest values, our most important relationships, our most authentic hopes and dreams, our most meaningful work, our highest priorities. It allows us to live with intention and purpose in the present moment.