by Alice Slaikeu Lawhead
In the introduction to Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton relates a story that he had always meant to write. It’s about an English yachtsman who sets sail, miscalculates his route, and—after weeks on the ocean—lands back in England under the impression that it’s a new island in the South Seas.
The intrepid explorer, armed to the teeth and speaking in sign language, plants the Union Jack on the barbaric shore that turns out to be the beach at Brighton. Is the man a fool? Of course he is. But he’s a happy fool, according to Chesterton, because what could be more delightful than to have all the fascinating terrors of going abroad . . . combined with the security of coming home again? To have braced oneself to discover New South Wales and then realize—with a gush of happy tears—that it was really old South Wales?
That yachtsman is me. I have, in the course of my life, rejected so much on the familiar shore of the Christian life—heroically sailing the seas of limitless grace and anti-legalism—only to get washed up on that shore that is at once familiar and undiscovered. Who says it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive?
A case in point: Wasn’t it drummed into me that a morning quiet time with the Lord is an essential spiritual discipline? (Someone tell me who it was who said words to the effect: “I pray an hour a day, but sometimes I’m very busy. On those days, I pray two hours.”) But I sailed far away from this practice, eschewing fussy observances like daily devotions.
Then, about ten years ago, I decided—for some reason that I cannot remember now—that I needed to read the Bible. The whole Bible. I knew it could be done in a year, with just a little determination, at 15 minutes a day. I embarked on the project one New Years’ Day, and with starts and stops—there were times when I had to read several days’ ration of scripture to make up for the days I’d missed—I managed to read the Bible through in the year.
But it all went by so fast! And I didn’t begin to come to grips with the drama that had unfolded, a few chapters at a time. So the next year, I got out a different translation and started in again. I think it was in the second year that I realized that I was less likely to get behind if I did the reading first thing in the morning, before everyone was up and about in the house, before going to work.
The morning habit began to be established. I soon found that, in the quietness, reading Scripture led me into an attitude of prayer. Especially as I read the Psalms, those words would become my own words, things that I too could say to God. And reading the words of Jesus prompted me to respond to him, to speak back to him on the basis of what he had said.
I’m willing to call daily devotion a discipline, although it is certainly one of the happiest disciplines I’ve ever practiced—involving as it does a comfortable chair, a view of the garden, a gentle beam of light on the page, and the morning’s first cup of coffee. I look forward to this as I go to sleep, and it propels me out of bed in the morning. On the occasions when I’m robbed of it by circumstances . . . I feel the loss, just as I might feel disappointment if a lunch date with a close friend was cancelled.
I’ve used the early morning hours to read through the Bible several more times, and to read devotional books as well. Anything that orients me towards God works for me. It’s been a time to reflect, to pray, to commit myself and the day ahead to the Lord. And because this is done in the first hours of the day, it has been a subtle yet strong reminder that my day is not my own, and neither is my life.
What a happy thing it is to land on the familiar shore after so many years at sea.
Alice Lawhead spent two weeks at Laity Lodge this past spring with her husband, Stephen Lawhead, who was writer-in-residence. She is a published author, non-executive director of Lion Hudson publishing (UK), and manager for the writing career of her husband.
I too have used the early hours to work as an attorney and to study the bible. The comfort of the bible seems to keep me sane. ECJr