When the first word is not the First Word.

By Kyle Small -

Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who cares for us: Preserve me (us) from the faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from me the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one Go, now and forever. Amen.U

~The Divine Hours, Morning Office, Week nearest February 24~
  
I want to make clear that the following is not a prescription for any one person’s life. It is merely a description of my engagement with God and the world in the recent days.

Every morning when I rise, I turn to the left to pick up my “smart” phone (an odd phrase I say) and begin reading the news and checking my email. I check out the world news section and the US news, but I try to skip by the “top news” as popular opinion on news rarely is…. (don’t get me wrong  I have nothing against Bieber, Lohan or R. Immanuel). Also, I obsessively look over Sci/Tech news and specifically search for Apple news (computers not fruits). 7-10 minutes into the opening of my eyelids, I am fully saturated on the highs and lows of world concerns. This is how I begin my day, everyday.

This morning, I arrived to the office and began praying through today’s Divine Hours (Phyllis Tickle). I found myself working through the texts for today incessantly reading the news text from this morning onto the Scripture text. Scripture must be the judge and voice to the news, I thought. I found myself growingly anxious and judgmental. Instead of letting the text speak anew, I was forcing it to speak to my news and email categories. The Scripture, which is a word of grace and judgment, was a bullet to strike all the made me unsettled in the news and my email. My reading of the Hours was full of judgment and angst, which only subsided when I “took up” the Lord’s Prayer (a normal part of the Hours).

During the final “Prayer Appointed for the Week” (see above), I came to realize something. The Hours are for me, not a first word, but a second (or maybe third). This is not inherently a problem, for the afternoon Liturgy is always this way. However, I am finding that the  Hours (or any devotional) ought be my First Word, taking the priority from Google News and the Huff Post. The Hours ought to be the First Word – a word to grant me peace, so that my reading of email and the news is placed under the sovereignty promise and grace of God as well as within the “peace that surpasses understanding.”

I ask my leadership students to learn the pastoral skill of suspending judgment. This capacious skill is not easy, yet necessary to discover how God speaks first amidst the news, email, and all that fills our lives. The First Word is a move away from angst and toward grace.

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