"We've always done it that way."

We are creatures of habit and routine.  It gets challenging to do things in a different way than what we normally do.  A few years ago, I was reading a book on change, and it had an interesting challenge in it.  Most of us have a pretty set routine when we bathe ourselves.  So the challenge that this book presented was, at the next shower/bath, do everything in the reverse order that you typically follow.  So, say you wash your hair first, and then your body, the challenge would be to wash your body first, and then your hair.

I was surprised at how difficult I found that simple challenge.  For one thing, it made me think about how I normally do things.  I hadn't realized how easily I had fallen into a habit, and mostly didn't even have to think about what I was doing.  Even something as simple as changing the order of my routine proved to be more difficult than I thought it would.  I also found that it took quite a bit longer than normal, because I had to think about so many things.

Change is not easy, especially when it comes to something that we have been doing the same way for a long time.  We slip into the comfort of the routine, and hardly even have to think about what we are doing.  This goes for many areas of life, but also includes our faith life.  Think about how challenging it is to attempt something different than what you have been doing.  Maybe you want to add a family prayer time or devotion time.  It's not normal, and it's different, and so the family struggles to get it as part of the routine.  There's even an element of active dislike toward it.  It takes the place of other things, and those other things are more preferable, in some instances, simply because we are familiar with them.  It may not be so much the prayer or devotion that is disliked, but the change in routine, and that we have to think differently now.

When it comes to our faith life, there is comfort in the familiar.  But should the familiar begin to become routine and rote, where we aren't thinking about the meaning and intent behind it, we start to fall into the danger of doing something just for the sake of doing it.  I don't have a connection with God in which He has revealed this directly to me, but it seems that God would much rather have us engaged and thinking about what we are doing with our faith life rather than simply going through the motions of our routine and habit.

Routine is good.  It gives structure to life.  The danger is when we fail to be properly engaged in the routine, and simply want it to stay the same because we've always done it that way.