Food has so much to teach us about nourishment, and as a culture we struggle with what it means to be not simply fed, but profoundly and holistically nourished.

We keep eating. We receive nourishment. We keep listening and learning and taking our daily bread. We wait on God to give us what we need to sustain us one more day. We acknowledge that there is far more wonder in this life of worship than we yet have eyes to see or stomachs to digest. We receive what has been set before us today as a gift.

Our bodies are instruments of worship.

We don’t wake up daily and form a way of being-in-the-world from scratch, and we don’t think our way through every action of our day. We move in patterns that we have set over time, day by day.

Both involve discipline and ritual. Both require that we cease relying on our own effort and activity and lean on God for his sufficiency.

The only thing that makes the church endurable is that somehow it is the body of Christ, and on this we are fed.”7

For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.

Hilton challenged this man to stay in his profession and to embrace “a third way, a mixed life combining the activity of Martha with the reflectiveness of Mary.” Hilton concluded that “such a spirituality needs to be consciously modeled and taught.”

you can’t get to the revolution without learning to do the dishes. The kind of spiritual life and disciplines needed to sustain the Christian life are quiet, repetitive, and ordinary.