Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Saturdays tend to be swimming days for us. The boys both have lessons most Saturday mornings and then they swim a lot in the afternoon.

This Saturday our oldest was practicing freestyle. The coach kept reminding him to kick through his breathing. He has a tendency to pause his kick when he takes a breath.

When he was corrected, he kept insisting that he was not pausing. In his mind, he was kicking through. He couldn’t feel the difference. Then, once he had a chance to really pay attention, he corrected it and could immediately feel the difference.

I was thinking how much like our faith life this is. We can tell ourselves we’re doing the things that matter. But we all slip a bit without even realizing it.

Maybe our prayers get not so regular. Maybe we’re not reading the Bible. Maybe we’re not spending time in rest, letting God speak in the quiet. Maybe we’re short with others or becoming harsh or unforgiving.

There are so many little ways we live our faith and we can all get a little lazy even though we might insist that nothing’s amiss. But when we get back into holy habits we just feel it — we can tell the difference that we may have been blind to not so long before.

So this week I’m going to do a little inventory of my habits of faith. I’m going to try and get back to walking the Way of Love a little more intentionally so that those holy habits can become ever more deeply a part of who I am.

May this week be a chance for you too to take stock and find yourself reminded to just keep kicking!

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert