“Sacred Chaos” – A Book For Journalers

“Sacred Chaos – Spiritual Disciplines for the Life You Have”, Tricia McCary Rhodes, 2008, $15.00, InterVarsity Press, ISBN 978-0-8308-3512-6

Tricia was going to write a book about sacred spaces, those times and places where we commune with God. Only, there wasn’t any space at all available in her life, just a continuous rush from one appointment to another meeting to fixing dinner to… She came to realize that in any day, really in every day, God is near to us and accompanying our spiritual journey. So she wrote this book to tell about her discoveries and to pass on experiments, retreat tips and ways-to-look-at our daily life as a truly sacred environment.

A passage from Matthew, 6:5, sets the stage for the book, “When you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production…All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?”  The author’s list of questions to ask about finding “quiet time” for prayer amplify the reasons we use as an excuse to not developing a relationship with God. But her first exercise for the reader follows: practice a two minute miracle for the next seven days to develop a resistance to prayer. What a challenge! So simple yet something we all can find in a day.

She continues the book with similar small but building-upon steps through some chapters titled “Kairos Connections, Spiritual Sight, Redefining Prayer, In Love with Living Word, and Getting Soaked on the Sabbath.” Each chapter ends with a “Making the Chaos Sacred” exercise for the reader as a way to reinforce the chapter’s message.

In the last chapter, “Seasons of the Soul,” Tricia writes about her own spiritual journey and the one thing she would do differently: “to relax and try to glean from the here and now, knowing that God is always at work, no matter how things appear to me.”  Appendix A has descriptions of longer Experiments in Prayer and a One-Day Experiment in Prayer as a Community. Appendix B lists the different attributes of God as found in Scriptures while Appendix C lists the Descriptions of Jesus as found in the Scriptures.

I consider this book an amazing find; Tricia’s stories of her experiences and the experiments she has used (and offers to the reader) to find prayer time were a fresh view at tackling a common situation. Actually, the book will help you to run to God and stay with him as you “turn chaos into something sacred.”

Tricia McCary Rhodes  is a writer (five previous books) and full-time Christian minister (31 years) having co-founded New Hope Church in San Diego, CA.