A Man of Routines

Source: Lauren Finkel Photography via Flickr

Death is the reward of an undisciplined life;
your foolish decisions trap you in a dead end.
Proverbs 5:23 (MSG)

“My friend, you are a man of routines!” a friend said to me a while back. He laughed as he said it. I found it interesting because he hadn’t known me long and we hadn’t spent that much time together. It struck me like an unexpected slap in the face. The comment was like getting a fresh, outside perspective and an objective view of how I am perceived by another.

I guess that it’s true. I have built certain routines and disciplines into my life. These chapter-a-day posts are perhaps the most public example, but there are others. Some routines and disciplines have come naturally (being a morning person). Others I’ve had to work at over time and have generated some success (time management, blogging). Many disciplines have been a long string of spurts and starts which meet with temporary success but fail to maintain over the long haul (e.g. simplicity, diet, exercise, focused prayer, saving). As I ponder this morning that I tend to see the cup half-empty. I see my failures more than my successes.

Perhaps that is why I was struck by the cup half-empty notion that “death is the reward of an undisciplined life” this morning. I totally get it. There are precious few successes in life (e.g. relationships, marriage, family, business, spiritual growth, education, writing, athletics, the arts, hobbies, and etc.) that do not require discipline. If we refuse to develop certain disciplines, we will utterly fail. The degree to which we succeed at developing particular disciplines will determine the degree of success we will ultimately realize in our lives. Not only is this true in things that really don’t matter all that much in the eternal sense (i.e. How good of a guitar player I become) but it is also true in matters of eternal significance (i.e. How good of a husband, father, and follower of Jesus I become).

I pray that I can continue to cultivate the discipines which, I come to understand, matter most in this life. In recent years I’ve developed a love for the prayer of St. Francis, which seems to capture the disciplines I increasingly crave to develop in my minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day journey through this world:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.