In his book You Are What You Love, James K.A. Smith writes, “Every household has a ‘hum,’ and that hum has a tune that is attuned to some end, some telos. We need to tune our homes, and thus our hearts, to sing his grace.”

The thought that every household has a hum begs the question, “With what does your home hum?” If I am honest, that is a convicting question. At times, our home’s hum starts to sound more like the tunes of the world around us or the flesh within us than the gospel story which we have been saved into.

A Cacophony of Choruses

My heart, left to itself, hums a tune that steadily says, “You are your performance; don’t mess up.” The culture around me knows this tune as well as my fallen heart; thus, the false tune gets amplified. Without realizing it, I begin to pass little tune along to my children.

My husband has his own native hums of false narratives, as do each of my children. One of them hums a tune about needing control; another hums a tune that longs for security, the other hums a tune about gathering all the right belongings. What a cacophony of choruses we are are apart from Christ!

But in Christ, we have the ability to hum the same sovereign tune, to sing from the same song sheet. Our hearts, like my husband’s guitars, need to be retuned and sometimes even restrung. We do this by identifying the false tunes that are training our hearts and rehearsing the Savior’s better song through little liturgies that anchor our hearts in God’s love.

Little Liturgies

The lies are loud. The tunes of the world are hard to resist. Thus, we need creative, formative habits that shape us and remind us of the truths of the gospel. We seek to use the pockets of time that God gives us together to rehearse the gospel truths we desperately need to hear daily: We have a received, rather than an achieved, identity; God’s favor to us is not fickle but fixed by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ; it’s not all up to us; we have a God who sovereignly steers our days, even when we make mistakes.

We have sports liturgies before practices and games. I have a sock liturgy because, it seems, my part-time job is picking up socks strewn throughout our entire household. I also have a liturgy for attachment for when I am struggling to work through an anxious attachment. We have bedtime routines that rehearse some core realities around which we are seeking to orient our lives. Sometimes they feel rote, but we persist in practicing them because we are shaped by routine whether we realize it or not.

A liturgy for attachment 

I am securely attached to the Trinitarian God in whom is all my security. 
No matter how fragile my security feels, it is sturdy because of my Savior.
There is One who see, hears, and knows all of my life (and all of me).
He both loves me and likes me.
He can handle all my honest emotions and he desires to hear all my desires, even if he doesn’t grant them as I think he should.
He can say no to me and still love me. 
I can be comfortable in his presence and rest at ease because he is both great and good, capable and kind, present and powerful. 
My hyper-responsibility can rest in the presence of the God who is perfectly righteous and responsible. 
I am safe, no matter what my brain stem seems to think. 
One day, I will get a new amygdala and will fully and forever experience security with my Savior.
Until then, I’ll do the best with what I have, trusting that his love assigned my lot. 
Amen.

A liturgy for race days 

My identity is secure and utterly independent of the outcome of this race.
I run from my beloved-ness, not for it.
I have trained hard, but I don’t put my trust in my training. I put my trust in You. 
Help me to run today to the best of my ability with strength in my steps as well as in my soul.
May the lessons I learn through running help me to run the spiritual race You have marked out for me.
I love You and need You.
Help me to do hard things for Your glory.
Amen. 

The beauty of liturgies is they can be shaped to fit your family! The point isn’t to figure out the perfect words or routines, but to rehearse his love for us so that we are reshaped by his love.

Loved into Loving 

You love me when I am unlovable,
You smile at me still when I scour.
Your fixed favor beams upon me,
As I sleep as in each waking hour.

My ability to receive Your love 
Changes not its ready remission.
Enable my soul to see Your smile,
To respond to Your love with volition.

Such steady, undeserved love
Surely shapes each recipient soul. 
Such mediated, unmitigated favor 
Makes tattered hearts whole. 

Yes, we are loved into loving,
Our souls are moved into motion.
The right response to doting love:
A heart stirred to steady devotion. 

Even though our households may hum different tunes, we can join to sing the song of our Savior’s love. May our homes become places where people are loved into loving.