An analogy.

I am very much in love with my wife. How and why we came to be in love, I don’t think either of us can say, but we are both agreed that staying in love takes a lot of work. The discipline of spending time together, of sharing activities, of listening to each other, of confessing our faults and forgiving each other...this is the work of staying in love.

And then there are the rituals that continue to nurture our relationship. If we only kissed or did the dishes when we felt like it or when there was nothing else better to do, I doubt we would have much of a marriage. But the rituals of daily affection, daily household duties, daily reminders of what it means to be in love...these are the means by which we nurture and sustain our relationship.

The church provides our spiritual means. To worship or pray only when we felt like it, to dismiss duty or discipline as an archaic concept, is to court spiritual disaster. Because of the discipline in our relationship, there is a depth and beauty to our marriage. Because of the discipline of the church, there is a depth and beauty to our faith, to our very lives.