Publication Date:June 30, 2008 Shipping:Eligible for Super Saver Shipping Promotion:Save $5.00 when you spend $25.00 or more on Qualifying Items offered by Amazon.com. Enter code BMLSAVES at checkout.Terms and Conditions Availability:Usually ships in 24 hours
Tricia Rhodes's life is chaotic. And it became even more so during an eight-month period when her son and daughter-in-law and two grandchildren moved in.
But God broke in. And Tricia learned to see him and communicate with him in whole new ways not on a spiritual retreat, but right in the midst of the chaos of life. She offers us here a fresh view of connecting to God, one that focuses on quality time and frees us from the rigidity of a devotional life that may feel stifled, grow stagnant or bring about guilt when we can't keep up.
These pages will help awaken your heart to the reality of God's presence in your life just as it is providing new ways to pray, to listen to God, to view others the way God sees them, to be guided by God. "Making the Chaos Sacred" sections at the end of each chapter and suggestions for prayer experiments give practical ideas for connecting with God and noticing his work throughout each day.
God is not afraid of chaos. If a chaotic life has you running, let Tricia's words offered here help you run to God in the midst of it and discover the ways he can turn even chaos into something sacred.
Customer Reviews:
excellent bookAugust 4, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is my second book by this author and I am just as pleased with this as the first. I have only read a few chapters and have already found so much practical advice on how to have quality time with God in the midst of an extremely busy life. I am in full time ministry, and anyone who is will admit that sometimes to have a decent devotion is a struggle because you are always taking care of everyone else. The author shows us that we are indeed spending time in prayer and God's presence in the everyday things we do. She gives practical simple advice on how to make the most of every minute to assure that you are experiencing God and not just doing something out of habit or obligation. This is an author who I will always look to for books that will assist me in continued spiritual development.
A keeper!July 13, 2008 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
While I'm an enthusiastic fan of the spiritual formation movement, one of my hang-ups with it is the lack of space in my life to implement practices like silent retreats or prolonged times of contemplation and meditation. It's not that I don't long for such times. It's just that, with two small children, a job, marriage, and household to manage, there is hardly enough concentrated space in my day to use the bathroom alone, let alone carve out extended quality time to spend with God. I might catch a half-hearted 15 to 20 minute quiet time once or twice a week, and then spend the other days feeling guilty that I didn't stop to read my Bible or say a prayer longer than two or three sentences.
Such is the background on why a book entitled Sacred Chaos: Spiritual Disciplines for the Life You Have caught my eye. In the first few pages, Tricia Rhodes relieved a good portion of my guilt explaining the blur of her own life, and how she would wearily attempt to read her Bible and end up falling asleep. She tells how God orchestrated inevitable chaos in her daily routine in order to take her out of her comfort zone. "He was drawing me into new territory, expanding my borders by exposing my tendency to be far too focused on hours set aside for prayer as the barometer of my relationship with him," she writes. "What I experienced in ways I'd never imagined was God entering the fray, injecting my busyness wit respites of peace in his presence, punctuating my chaos with the stunning sense that he was drawn near."
The book offers many concrete and practical ways to integrate practices of the spiritual disciplines into daily life. Each chapter is short, and focuses on one specific way of connecting with God throughout the day. Each chapter also ends with a short practical activity. Throughout the book are ideas for specific `experiments' in spiritual practices. As I read through the book, I kept a quick-reference notecard recording Rhodes' suggestions for "making the chaos sacred". Samples of these suggestions include:
*Using feelings as a springboard for prayer *Praying about God's presence in your daily schedule *Praying for spiritual insight about others *Practice lectio divina. Read. Meditate. Pray. Contemplate. *Breath prayers
While I've read some books in the spiritual disciplines genre that either too ethereal or too common-sense-y (i.e. `I could have googled `spiritual formation' and written the book myself'), Sacred Chaos is simple yet profound, practical yet deeply spiritual. Don't let one more "Sacred ___" title scare you away. This one's a keeper.
