If you got to choose, how would you like to live your life? Are there routines you’d like to have? Do you have guiding principles to help you keep first things first? Brother Lawrence created his Rule in the 1500s. Several years ago, I began mine.

Now as I look back, I can see how my Rule has led me to make choices that are aligned with my values, and to say Yes to opportunities I may have overlooked.

This week I was asked to write a new Rule of Life based on a slightly different question: What habits, practices, and commitments will sustain you and build your capacity to fulfill your call? (What a great question!) Some possibilities include spending time alone, reflection, reading, writing, being creative, connecting with God in prayer and the Scripture, taking care of my health, being part of something, knowing others and being known, being joyful, spending time with friends.

It’s important that we give thought to how we want to live our lives so that we are able to “run with endurance the race set before us looking unto Jesus.” (Heb. 12)

May I encourage you to spend some time this month journaling about what habits, practices and commitments you want to have—what builds your capacity and sustains you? And then also identify what depletes you and needs to be carefully contained.

Perhaps you can find 4-5 specific statements, the big rocks of your life, that you want to write down first. This is how I live my life…. Write them in the front of your journal and begin to practice them and pay attention to how you are doing. And then, periodically, you can revise your rule, making it fit the season you are in.