Is Everything Spiritual?

Rob Bell in his “Everything Spiritual” tour said there is no word in Hebrew that means spirituality. The reason for this was because spirituality was not seen as separate or distinct from ordinary life. Every part of life, decision-making and events were seen as spiritual. Jesus never once asks his disciples how their spiritual life was being fed or how they felt their spiritual life was going. It would not have made sense to ask these questions.

To live is to be spiritual. To be human is to carry a spirituality that connects your earthly self to a heavenly realm.

I believe it is advantageous for all of us to carry this same understanding of the divine. Whether you define it as Spirituality, Christ, God, Holy Spirit, divine intervention or pure luck, it is evident to me that something bigger than this life is alive and moving in this world. I call this God.

For some of us I fear we make distinctions between life and spirituality. Life is what we do from Monday to Saturday and spirituality is what we do on Sundays. Spirituality has become a word synonymous with retreat or vacation. Spirituality becomes for most people a hobby or better yet a last resort. When you have time to fit it in to your day or you are at the end of your rope then you attempt to connect with God through some mystical spirit that makes little to no sense to you. For some people this can only be done through prayer and for others it means you need to go back to church- for this person believes spirituality can only be found in the walls of the room that you hold to be most sacred: Your sanctuary.

Prayer and Worship are vital for spiritual growth but I want to paint another picture of spirituality.

Observe a sailboat. It cannot move by its own power but must rely on the force of wind, over which neither sailboat nor sailor has control. Still, a sailor can shift the position of the boat by adjusting the tiller and sheets so that the sails catch the wind. Free will is like the sailor. Though it is sometimes a struggle, we can choose to hold the boat of our life steady into the wind of the Spirit. Then our efforts are supported and directed by grace. One caution: Once we have opened our sails to that wind, we need to be prepared to go where the Spirit blows! (Marjorie Thompson, Soul Feast)

The sailboat metaphor will get leaky if you push it too far. In the end, even our ability to hold our boat steady into the wind rests on God’s grace. All is grace, yet all depends on our willingness to work freely with grace. The magnificent truth of Christian faith is that the work of divine grace makes our efforts not less our own, but more.

When this is realized then spirituality is thus initiated by our awareness of our place in life. Spirituality becomes a daily necessity and a constant reflection on our relationship with God.

I hope you can see that God is trying to move within you. I hope you can see that God speaks to you during the week just like on Sundays. If you begin to see your spiritual life as actually the daily life you choose to live then you will begin to see how the Spirit is constantly blowing in the sails of your life’s boat.

We should now define Spirituality as your ability to see the Spirit working from within and beyond your self. When you do this, you actually see yourself as an important part of God’s narrative and an intricate part in God’s Kingdom. Believe it or not, God wants to use your whole self in furthering the Kingdom of God and furthering your understanding of what it means to become fully alive.

Becoming spiritual is actually becoming fully human. What is the Spirit doing in your life – right now? Answering this question helps answer what it means to be fully alive.