Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

One of my favorite questions that John Eldredge asked in his excellent book, Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times, is, “What do I need today?”

Each month when I meet with my spiritual director, he asks me, what do you need today, this week, this month? What will bring you life, restore life to the weary parts of your soul? What do your relationships need? What do you need physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually?

Too often, we gut through it, put our heads down, pull up our bootstraps, and get it done.

Then we crash.

But our daily practices reveal our hearts and what matters to us.

If we don’t build in practices each day to strengthen us, when the storms hit, we won’t survive them.

One of the fascinating lessons in the book of Daniel is what he did each day and how that enabled him to move through his life with strength.

We’re told in numerous places, but it’s highlighted in Daniel 6 about his prayer life. In verse 10, we’re told: that Daniel went into his house. The windows in its upstairs room opened toward Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before.

In Daniel 6, life is getting hard for Daniel. Those around him have betrayed him, sought a way to kill him, and he does what he does every day; he prays.

Here are a few questions that rumble around my soul this week as I looked at this text:

• What do I look to or go to alleviate that pain and difficulty when life gets hard?
• How much do I pray? How often do I pray each day?
• How focused am I on the things of God versus my things?
• How focused am I on what God is doing around me versus what God is doing for me?

Eldredge said, “Resilience is built in our daily practices.”

Our actions each day determine where our lives end up.

We know this, yet we continue to waste a lot of time in our lives on trivial things and then wonder why we aren’t where we want to be or have the things we hoped to have.