The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life by Tony Jones, Phyllis Tickle (Foreword by)

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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: New
International Version (North American Edition). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International
Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan.
Some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permission
of the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, and
any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
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Editorial direction by Carla Barnhill
Art direction by Jay Howver
Proofreading by Laura Gross
Cover design by Rule 29
Interior design by David Conn
Cover photo by Greg Gerla/luckyPix/Veer
Author photo by Thom Olson
Printed in the United States of America
06 07 08 • 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jones, Tony, 1968-
The sacred way : spiritual practices for everyday life / by Tony Jones.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-224).
ISBN-10: 0-310-25810-3 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25810-0 (pbk.)
1. Spiritual life--Christianity. I.Title.
BV4501.3.J663 2005
248.4’6--dc22 2004023720
The Sacred Way
Copyright © 2005 by Youth Specialties
Youth Specialties products, 300 South Pierce Street, El Cajon, CA 92020, are published by
Zondervan, 5300 Patterson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49530
CHAPTER ONE
The Quest for God
Old habits are hard to break, and no one is easily
weaned from his own opinions; but if you rely on your
own reasoning and ability rather than on the virtue
of submission to Jesus Christ, you will but seldom and
slowly attain wisdom. For God wills that we become
perfectly obedient to himself, and that we transcend
mere reason on the wings of burning love for him.
Thomas à Kempis
I wrote a lot of this book in coffee shops. I
was working at one in May when a spring
thunderstorm came roiling across the plains of
western Minnesota. The table at which I was
sitting faced the large parking lot of an adjacent
mall. As the wind picked up, the trees started
to bend, and then the rain came in almost
horizontal sheets.
It being a weekday afternoon, the mall’s
parking lot was only half full. Way out on the
edge was parked a brand new BMW 525i—it
didn’t even have license plates yet. Someone had
parked it far away from all other cars, hoping to avoid the dings
and dents of carelessly opened doors.
As the wind gusted, I saw a shopping cart begin to roll, pushed
by the storm. Free from the constraints of the Cart Corral, the
unmanned missile gained speed, unhindered by obstacles as it
wheeled across the slick asphalt.
I saw it coming: The cart seemed to be caught in the tractor
beam of the new car—250 yards and closing fast! 200 yards! 150!
100 yards! 50...25...10...5...Impact! That cart smashed right into the
side of the as-yet unblemished BMW. I kid you not: There wasn’t
another car within 100 yards, but that cart was honed right in on
its target. Mission accomplished.
It seems to me that God is a lot like that shopping cart—not
that God has four wheels and a child safety strap, but that God
always seeks us out. No matter how far away we park, and no matter
how much we try to avoid bumping into the Divine Creator of
the Universe, God fi nds us and leaves a mark. It’s not a search-and destroy
mission; it’s a search-and-give life mission. I’ve found that
it’s pretty common for God to hunt me down and smack me in the
right front quarter panel. I know others share this feeling, hence
the continued popularity of Francis Thompson’s 19th century poem,
“The Hound of Heaven,” in which the protagonist proclaims,
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
And yet, Love pursues, with an “unhurrying chase” at an “unperturbèd
pace,” and a Voice proclaims, “Naught shelters thee, who
wilt not shelter Me.” Love wins; God wins, hounding the poem’s
protagonist toward the gates of heaven, never giving up, in spite of
attempts to outrun him.
Now, this is a poem not a theological statement. It would be fairly
silly to assert that one can’t ignore God. In fact, it hardly needs
to be stated that, of the six billion people on this planet, a pretty
hefty number disregard God completely. But for a lot of us, Frances
Thompson’s poem articulates something significant. We have
this nagging feeling that God is following us around, nudging us to
live justly, and expecting us to talk to him every once in a while.*
I guess I’m one of those people—one of those whom God is constantly
nagging. Every time I leave God’s side, as it were, it’s not
too long until I feel God tagging right along beside me. I can’t seem
to shake him. Yet having this sense of God’s company doesn’t necessarily
translate to a meaningful spiritual life. I know this because
despite my awareness of God’s presence, I have spent most of my
life trying to figure out what to do about it.
Why Go Ancient?
I was raised in a nice, Midwestern, church-going family. I went away
to college and got involved in a conservative evangelical college
group then went straight to seminary after graduation. In other
words, by the time I was 25, my views of God, prayer, the Bible, etc.
were pretty screwed up. I had more head-knowledge about faith,
religion, whatever you want to call it, than a person should, but I
really didn’t seem to be able to put it into practice. I’d say there was
one word that summed up my religious life: obligation.
I had been taught that the way to connect with God on a daily
basis is to have a 30-minute “quiet time.” That is, you should sit
down with your Bible open, read it a little, and then lay a bunch of
stuff on God, making sure to mention how excellent he is before
running through the list of all the things you need.
I found this style of personal devotion to be a pretty shallow well,
and it wasn’t long before I was doing it only every other day, then
once a week, and then, well, never. Taking the place of my 30-minute
quiet time, however, were hours and hours of that great religious
tradition: guilt. Here was the equation: God is out there +
God wants to hear from me + I’m not talking = failure by me.
After about 10 years of this, and hearing this same pattern corroborated
by many people who were also trying to listen for God
in their lives, something occurred to me: People have been trying to
follow God for thousands of years, Christians for the last two thousand.
Maybe somewhere along the line some of them had come up
with ways of connecting with God that could help people like me.
* I feel very uncomfortable referring to God as “he.” On the one hand, I strongly believe that God is a personal being, but on the other hand, I believe that God is so much more
than our words “he,” “she,” “him,” and “her” can capture. Recently, I’ve been trying
to explain this to my three- and four-year-olds. When they look around at other
people, dogs, birds, and hamsters, they only know “he” and “she,” so trying to convince
them that God is neither and both and more than the two combined has been
a challenge.