Although August is often described still as ‘the holiday season’, the reality is that in almost every fortnight in the year someone from our congregations will be on holiday. So if you’ve already had your holiday, apologies that this estival encouragement comes a bit late.

During our recent Dare to be different sermon series we considered what a life in balance might look like. Those of you who were present on July 11th may remember that we drew inspiration and guidance from St Benedict. Specifically, we looked to the Rule of St Benedict – his common-sense guide on how to live as members of a gathered Christian family – for help in identifying the key elements to a balanced Christian life.

According to Benedict, these elements included: a) work, in particular physical/manual work, something that involves us in using more than our minds, whether in paid employment, volunteer work, or other channels of our activity; b) activity for the mind, chiefly through reflective reading and study; to keep thinking new thoughts and learning new truth; and c) the life of the spirit, the life of prayer; Benedict prescribes times for praying together – corporate prayer – and also for private, personal prayer.

I’ve been privileged to have had the opportunity to see the impact of this at first hand while a guest of the Benedictine Community of Fleury, a little south-east of Orleans. There the Abbot and his monks keep a pattern of prayer that begins early in the morning and continues at specific times throughout the day, ending with Night Prayer around 9pm.

What I observed there in that most hospitable of monasteries was that their time for God and their pattern of prayer did two things: first, it was the foundation for everything within the community; and, second, this is what provides that Christian family with its rhythm of life. Other things happen during the day – work, meals, study, and so on – yet all these activities are located within the rhythm of prayer; rather than what happens so easily in our increasingly busy culture, namely, that prayer and worship ends up being squeezed in once the ‘real business’ of life has been accomplished.

Our holidays, whenever we take them, offer an ideal opportunity to step back from our normal routines, re-charge our batteries and get things into a truer perspective. So may I encourage all of us who are going on holiday in the coming weeks to use some of that time to consider how, with the Holy Spirit’s help, we may establish a rhythm of life which manages to be sustaining, fruitful and (like Benedict’s Rule) reasonable.

Yours in Christ,

Charles Stewart