Mar. 2020, Week 1: Faith Life

by Soren and Ever Johnson

“If only I had time to pray!” we say to ourselves as we ponder our endless to do lists. As we journey into the first full week of Lent, it’s a fitting time to reexamine our relationship to prayer.

Too often, we approach time with a zero-sum mentality. We look at our busy lives, and at some level, we decide to ration just a small amount of it to the Lord. If we gave him more, we reason, then we wouldn’t have time to accomplish all that he gave us to do. 

But when we approach our day this way, we shoot ourselves in the foot. By limiting contact with the one who has the power to bend time and space, designing life hacks we could never dream of, we cut off our own best resource for making it all come together.

For our Trinity House — the consequences of putting God in a human-scale box are far-reaching. Our spouse and children will intuit that time is indeed a zero-sum game, and that God should receive what’s left over. Instead of the abundance of God overflowing through all five levels of our Trinity House, a “scarcity of resources” mentality will contaminate every aspect of our family life.

As we seek to build a strong 1st level (Faith Life) of our Trinity House, we need to base our decision-making on a far different reality. Time given to the Lord is not time lost to other tasks on our agenda. Time given to the Lord does not contract the time remaining to accomplish everything else, but rather expands our time by putting us in better touch with the grace that can transform our limitations.

We experience this divine calculus in so many ways, but here is one practical example. Studies report that 80 percent of adults reach for their smartphone within the first 15 minutes of the day. But when we shortchange our time of prayer in the morning by jumping on this bandwagon, we set ourselves up for an anxious and fast-contracting experience of the time allotted to that day.

But when we surrender the first minutes of the day to the Lord in prayer, the divine mentality, outside of time, sets the tone. Instead of anxiety, comparison, or frustration, we experience peace. In those early minutes with him, we receive his life, words, grace, Spirit, and silence. Each of these becomes a seed within us, which expands throughout the day, gradually marrying our limitations to his expansiveness.  

When it comes to our Trinity House, the impact of this paradigm shift is vast. Divine grace expands the horizons of the marriage and the formation of the children (Level 2). This expansion alters the “zero-sum” dynamic of working through lists of tasks in the household economy (Level 3). Time opens up at the dinner table and in other arenas of family culture (Level 4) to new dimensions of togetherness, love and creativity. Finally, the seemingly scarce time which prevented us from hosting and serving others (Level 5) is replaced with abundance. 

Early in our Lenten journey is a fitting time to experience the upside-down way in which the Lord relates to the “time” and “space” of our day. It’s counter-intuitive. It’s beyond our logic. And it awaits each one of us today.  

Heaven In Your Home Toolkit  The Our Father is the touchstone for prayer. Read this moving reflection in the Catechism on the “seven petitions” contained within the Our Father. 

“Inasmuch as it has pleased our Lord to place you in the kind of life in which you are perpetually distracted,” writes St. Francis de Sales, “you must accustom yourself to making short prayers.” In this excerpt of his writing, consider whether you’re in fact too busy to pray.  

Don’t Miss…

Heaven In Your Home Workshops: Coming to Fredericksburg on the evening of Wed. March 18th! Registration for in-person or via livestream here.  

What Others Are Saying

“The flow chart and implementation of it in an app make it seem extremely doable. I also really liked the segment on what we are up against.” Heaven in Your Home Workshop Participant 

Please Join Us In Prayer  

We invite you to keep the following needs in prayer and thanksgiving: 

• For all the participants of the upcoming Heaven in Your Home Workshops, that they would be strengthened in their vocations.
• For all parents, as they look for ways to strengthen and encourage the faith life of their family.