Customer Reviews

Sacred Chaos: Spiritual Disciplines for the Life You Have

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While I'm an enthusiastic fan of the spiritual formation movement, one of my hang-ups with it is the lack of space in my life to implement practices like silent retreats or prolonged times of contemplation and meditation. It's not that I don't long for such times. It's just that, with two small children, a job, marriage, and household to manage, there is hardly enough concentrated space in my day to use the bathroom alone, let alone carve out extended quality time to spend with God. I might catch a half-hearted 15 to 20 minute quiet time once or twice a week, and then spend the other days feeling guilty that I didn't stop to read my Bible or say a prayer longer than two or three sentences.

Such is the background on why a book entitled Sacred Chaos: Spiritual Disciplines for the Life You Have caught my eye. In the first few pages, Tricia Rhodes relieved a good portion of my guilt explaining the blur of her own life, and how she would wearily attempt to read her Bible and end up falling asleep. She tells how God orchestrated inevitable chaos in her daily routine in order to take her out of her comfort zone. "He was drawing me into new territory, expanding my borders by exposing my tendency to be far too focused on hours set aside for prayer as the barometer of my relationship with him," she writes. "What I experienced in ways I'd never imagined was God entering the fray, injecting my busyness wit respites of peace in his presence, punctuating my chaos with the stunning sense that he was drawn near."

The book offers many concrete and practical ways to integrate practices of the spiritual disciplines into daily life. Each chapter is short, and focuses on one specific way of connecting with God throughout the day. Each chapter also ends with a short practical activity. Throughout the book are ideas for specific `experiments' in spiritual practices. As I read through the book, I kept a quick-reference notecard recording Rhodes' suggestions for "making the chaos sacred". Samples of these suggestions include:

* Using feelings as a springboard for prayer
* Praying about God's presence in your daily schedule
* Praying for spiritual insight about others
* Practice lectio divina. Read. Meditate. Pray. Contemplate.
* Breath prayers

While I've read some books in the spiritual disciplines genre that either too ethereal or too common-sense-y (i.e. `I could have googled `spiritual formation' and written the book myself'), Sacred Chaos is simple yet profound, practical yet deeply spiritual. Don't let one more "Sacred ___" title scare you away. This one's a keeper.

This is my second book by this author and I am just as pleased with this as the first. I have only read a few chapters and have already found so much practical advice on how to have quality time with God in the midst of an extremely busy life. I am in full time ministry, and anyone who is will admit that sometimes to have a decent devotion is a struggle because you are always taking care of everyone else. The author shows us that we are indeed spending time in prayer and God's presence in the everyday things we do. She gives practical simple advice on how to make the most of every minute to assure that you are experiencing God and not just doing something out of habit or obligation. This is an author who I will always look to for books that will assist me in continued spiritual development.

There are many disciplines that we want to undertake as Christians in our efforts to know Christ deeper and walk closer to Him. Unfortunately, we sometimes get so caught up in the "have to's" and "how to's" that we lose the reason why we are doing them in the first place. This book takes these disciplines and simplifies them, makes them easier to incorportate in our daily lives. By incorporating some of these into our lives, I believe we will be able to stress less and worship more. Worth the money and the time to read.

this book was just at the right time - you might say ordered by the Lord, and annointed!! it was just quietly so common-sensible!