Human beings are navigational creatures. They steer their lives from one thing to another. We are as C.S. Lewis once wrote, “continually unsatisfied.” We are easily enamored by the next thing, the coolest thing, or the brand-new thing.
Church life can be much the same. Sometimes we fall into a monotonous pattern which is the general criticism of liturgical services. “Why are we doing the same thing again?” “Why can’t we have new things every Sunday? Why can’t we be spontaneous?” Or to put it in holy language: “Why don’t we let the Spirit lead?” And the implication is that the Spirit of God is fickle, moving from one thing to another. But the Spirit in the Bible is portrayed as the Person who brings order out of chaos. The Spirit was involved in the creation of the world. On the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit was the harmonizing figure in the building of this renewed Church in Acts 2.
Far from being capricious and indecisive, the Spirit is order and structure. In fact, one of the most evident things we see in the early church is a life of repetition. They gathered and broke bread, read the Scriptures, and prayed. They moved in this litany of practices again and again. They weren’t making things up as they went along, they weren’t enamored by the latest trends in 1st-century practices. They followed the Spirit of God. Our monotony is sometimes evidence of our indifference and not the result of liturgical habits
With joy and thanksgiving, I find in the liturgy a blessed stability amidst a chaotic world.