Routines or Ruts

ROUTINES OR RUTS

Fall could be as much work as spring, but I am not used to doing much yard work in the fall. I have worked outside the home so many years, but now that I am retired and have time to do stuff like that, I don’t even think about it. Raking leaves? I raked last year’s fall leaves in the spring. After all, if hubby mowed, it would grind them up into nice mulch. The problem is that I don’t have a fall yard routine.

I have recently developed an evening kitchen routine, doing the dishes, wiping down the counters and lightly sweeping the floors before shutting off the lights. It is a joy to get up to a clean kitchen every morning.

Some churches have removed rituals and liturgies from their worship, replacing hymns with choruses, pipe organs with guitars, a full choir with a worship team. Other churches hang onto hundred-year-old rituals of worship, which the present-day worshipper cannot relate to.
Rituals and routines are part of Christianity. After all it was Jesus Himself who said at the last supper, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Luke 22:19. The problem is rituals can take the place of a vital personal relationship with Jesus.

Instead of committing our hearts and lives to Jesus, a ritual allows us to go through a show of commitment. Instead of burying our old selves in water baptism and rising from the water into new life, we just get wet. Instead of singing with our hearts to the Lord, we mumble through unfamiliar and meaningless words to a tune that is too high for the common voice to sing.

Of course, the answer to this dilemma is following the Lord in the Christian life with our hearts and not our minds. As we go through each ritual of the church, whether singing, water baptism, commitment, we should keep our focus on the Lord.

Make Jesus Christ the center of your worship experience, so the routines will not become ruts.