The Devotion of Common Life — If We Are to Follow Christ, It Must Be Every Day

✦ The Devotion That Has No Place Anywhere Else

Law names the strangeness that the honest soul eventually sees: the piety placed in attendance while the common life is neglected. The church building entered every Sunday. The singing performed. The sermon heard. The donation given. And then — the rest of the week lived as though God had no opinion about Monday through Saturday.

Law does not condemn public worship. But he names the imbalance: there is not one precept of our Lord's that commands attendance at public worship — and yet every page of the Gospel commands the duties of ordinary life. Love your neighbor. Forgive your enemy. Feed the hungry. Deny yourself. Take up your cross daily. These are not Sunday commands. They are every-day commands. And they can only be practised in common life — because they have no place anywhere else.

Le names her own experience — with the honesty that marks every entry in this journal: so many years attending church every Sunday, and yet devotion was not priority. The attendance was faithful. The devotion was absent. The building was entered. The life was not given. And Law says: the devotion that Christ taught was never about the building. It was about the common life — every hour, every act, every ordinary day — made into an offering. 🙏

✦ Every Virtue — Every Day

Law builds the case with the relentless logic that Le recognized as Protestant in tone — each line a new if, each if leading to the same conclusion: it must be in the common life.

If self-denial — then ordinary life. If humility — then a constant course. If love of enemies — then a visible demonstration. If patience — then every day, every circumstance. Not once. Not on Sunday. Not in the prayer closet only. Every day. Every act. Every hour.

The virtues of Christ are not kept in a display case to be admired on the Sabbath. They are worn into the street and used. Self-denial is practised at the table, at the wallet, at the schedule. Humility is lived with the neighbor, the stranger, the difficult person. Love of enemies is demonstrated — visible, Law says — in the common way of spending every common day.

Lewis said the same thing from the other direction: love your enemy by wishing his good — not feeling fond of him, not saying he is nice when he is not. Law says: make it visible. Make it common. Make it daily. The love that is only felt on Sunday is not the love Christ commanded. 🙏

✦ The Common Way of Spending Every Day

Law arrives at the sentence that contains the whole book: if we are to follow Christ, it must be in our common way of spending every day. Not in the extraordinary moments. Not in the mountaintop experiences. Not in the church services or the retreats or the conferences. In the common way. The way we spend Tuesday. The way we spend our money on Wednesday. The way we speak to our husband on Thursday. The way we rise before dawn on Friday.

New creatures — new ways of living. The new birth is not a change of label. It is a change of life. The creature who has been made new must live new — in the world, visibly, daily, in every common act. And the test of the new creation is not what happens on Sunday morning. It is what happens on Monday afternoon.

And Le adds Paul's discipline to Law's logic: I keep my flesh under subjection. 1 Corinthians 9:27. The daily subjection. The daily bringing of the body — its appetites, its laziness, its preferences, its resistance — under the authority of the Spirit. Not once. Every day. The common way of spending every day — with the flesh under subjection and the life given to God. 🙏

✦ The Standard — and the Grace

Law states the standard without flinching: if our common life is not a common course of humility, self-denial, renunciation, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection — we do not live the lives of Christians. The standard is total. The demand is absolute. The common life — every day of it — must be marked by these virtues. Not some days. Not the good days. Not the days when the spirit is strong and the flesh is quiet. Every day.

And Le — reading Law's uncompromising demand in Eymet, France — adds the grace that completes the picture: we must be patient with ourselves because we don't grow up overnight.

This is not a contradiction of Law. It is the truth that makes Law livable. The standard is real. The demand is real. And the growth toward the standard is not instant. The seed does not become the full corn in the ear overnight. The mustard seed does not become the large, hardy shrub in a day. The pilgrim who rises before dawn does not become perfect by the afternoon.

Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. Hebrews 12:2. He started it. He will finish it. The authoring was His work — the midnight visit, the priest at the hospital, the conversion, the new birth. And the finishing is His work too. Not ours. Not by our striving. Not by our tinkering with the inner life. The author who began the story will write the ending. And the pilgrim's job — the common devotion of every common day — is to keep walking, keep rising, keep subjecting the flesh, keep following Christ in the common way of spending every day. Patiently. Faithfully. One morning at a time. 🙏