When I was about four years old, one summer day I was in the shop on our family farm, hammering away on something with fierce determination. The door was open and the sound carried into the adjacent yard where my mother was hanging the laundry out to dry. As she pinned the clothes to the line, she called out, “David, what are you making in there?” With barely a pause in the hammering, I shouted back, “I don’t know — I’m not done yet!”

That reply might be the truest answer any of us can give about our lives. What are we making with our days? What kind of person are we becoming? Most of the time the honest answer is: I don’t know yet. I’m still being formed. I’m still unfolding. God isn’t done with me.

This sermon has its roots in a conversation with our pastors about two years ago. At the time, I had been asked to build a new pulpit for the church and was happily immersed in the work. The project was a joy—not only because I love wood and woodworking, but also because it felt like a way of giving something back to this congregation. During that conversation I mentioned, half in jest and half in earnest, that the only compensation I hoped for was the chance to preach a sermon from the finished pulpit. A modest price, I trust you’ll agree.

Building the pulpit gave me space—between the sawing, planning, and sanding—to reflect on what I was making not only at the workbench but also in life. You see, as my hands were shaping ash lumber into a pulpit, the pulpit was also shaping me. Among other things, the pulpit taught me the importance of the invisible. Building the pulpit developed my skill in joining boards together at compound angles rather than the simple right angles that are often used in woodworking. Hidden inside the front corners of this pulpit are sliding dovetails that join the front pieces to the sides. Without that invisible joinery, the pulpit would collapse.

Life also has its invisible joinery, and its equally important for stability. In my spiritual journey in recent years, I’ve come to experience a presence, a mystery, a living current of life beneath all that is. I’m slowly learning to trust these encounters as genuine openings to the holy. When I stay connected to that presence, something in me aligns. I become more awake, more compassionate, more attentive, more free. And when I lose that connection…, I get reactive. I get defensive. I transmit inner pain to others. I forget that, as the Psalmist wrote in the scripture read this morning, it is God that prospers us – shaping, sanding, joining, and blessing us as we live our very real, very daily lives.

That takes us to a simple and important question: how do we stay connected to the deep foundation of life in the middle of our ordinary days? It’s not through right belief, but through right practice. Not through theories, but through attention. Not by escaping daily life, but by bringing awareness of a higher power, of the holy, of God, into the flow.

Most of our life isn’t spent on mountaintops. Most of our life is spent in routines: making breakfast, responding to emails, paying bills, listening to coworkers, driving in traffic, repairing something that broke again, helping a child or partner through a hard moment, doing the endless work of caring for a home, a community, or an aging body, or simply trying to get enough sleep.

We live in a swirl of work, caregiving, volunteering, errands, worries, and moments of joy and play that slip in between. Most of our spiritual life, then, has to happen right there—in the middle of the ordinary. In daily life. Because there is no other life.

My intention today is to talk about integration — the coming together of our inner life and our outer life. Many of us grew up thinking spiritual life happened “inside” and action happened “outside,” as though they were two separate compartments connected by a small, squeaky door. But I’m learning — slowly — that there is only one life, one continuous unfolding. And the spiritual path is not so much about believing the right things as it is about practicing a way of being that brings inner preparation into our outer actions.

So what does inner preparation look like? Inner preparation helps us recognize the holy in the ordinary. When I take time each day, usually in early morning, to pause, breathe, and open to the presence beneath all things, I begin to see that even the smallest tasks are part of a larger wholeness. The holy is not something we find once in a while. It is something we train the eye of the heart to see.

Inner preparation helps us be present and attentive. Most of what damages relationships is not malice — it’s inattention. Too often, we see without seeing, listen without listening, move through life half-absent. Inner preparation teaches us to arrive. To notice. To be where we already are. Had I understood the importance of attention many years ago, I would have been a different parent and a different spouse, yet, what is mine to do now is to live more fully present today, every day.

Inner preparation helps us interrupt emotional reactivity. There’s an anonymous saying I return to often: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” That “space” is inner work. Without that space, we react. With that space, we respond.

Inner preparation helps us close the gap between who we long to be and who we habitually are. Minding that gap is perhaps the most important task of the inner life. It is one thing—and a real gift—to help make the world more whole in outward ways. But it’s another thing—just as essential, perhaps even more foundational—to move through daily life with integrity and centeredness, bringing a steady spirit into our homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods even when the day is full of disruptions and surprises.

So how do we live this way, given our human tendency to react? How do we cultivate a practical, vibrant connection to the holy foundation beneath everything? I want to offer four simple practices—not beliefs or doctrines, but daily ways of living—that help the inner and outer life join hands.

1. Daily quiet time. Mindfulness, meditation, contemplation, prayer—there are many paths into silence. Choose the form that fits your life and let it become a small daily anchor. Even five minutes can shift the tone of a day; twenty minutes can reshape the whole landscape of the heart.

My own quiet time often happens in nature—on the back porch or by a window. As I notice each birdcall, each falling leaf, each slant of golden light or drop of rain, I simply say “thank you” and let gratitude do its quiet, transformative work. In that moment, I feel held by a presence I belong to, a presence greater than myself and yet intimately within me. It sets an important intention for my day.

2. Small pauses throughout the day. A moment. A couple deep breaths. A brief remembering I am made in the image of God and so are the people around me. I aim to do this hourly throughout the day, though sometimes I let life get in the way. These little pauses reset the system, re-open the heart, and help us respond rather than react. They are the difference between transmitting our pain and transforming it.

3. Blessing the work of our hands. Before beginning a task — cooking, writing, helping a child, sitting in a meeting, building a pulpit — take a silent moment and say: “May this work be an offering. May I bring presence to what I’m doing.” It changes the work. But more importantly, it changes the worker.

4. Receiving life instead of controlling it. We often approach life with subtle tension, a low-level attempt to control outcomes. But contemplative practice helps us to receive life as it arrives — its gifts, its disruptions, its imperfections — and to trust that we can meet whatever comes with grace.

Now I want to turn toward something we don’t often talk about: self-doubt. I want to invite you to think about your daily life as it actually is: the busyness, the frustrations, the satisfactions, the pains, the pleasures, the griefs, and especially — the moments of doubt. Those quiet moments when you think: I’m not enough. I should be doing more. I should be doing better. Other people seem to manage life better than I do. I messed up again. These thoughts visit all of us. No exceptions.

A spiritual life is not the elimination of imperfection. It is the transformation of our relationship to imperfection — our own and everyone else’s. Inner work teaches us to greet those moments with attentiveness, noticing the doubt without being swallowed by it; with acceptance, not of the lie of inadequacy, but of the reality of being human; and with gratitude that even in doubt, we are held by a presence larger than our fear. These three gestures — attentiveness, acceptance, and gratitude — open the heart, soften the ego, and reconnect us to the deeper foundation beneath everything. The reading in Philippians today describes God’s peace “guarding” our hearts — not by eliminating emotion, but by giving us space inside.

That brings me back to the things that we do and make, our outer work which shapes the world around us. And to our inner work, which shapes us. The two – our outer work and inner work — are interrelated. How we do anything, says Richard Rohr, is how we do everything. The way we saw a board, write a lesson plan, draft a document, write an email, or cook a meal, is the way we speak to others and to ourselves. The way we drive a car through traffic is the way we navigate among people. The way we handle frustration is the way we love – or fail to love. The way we plan our day is the way we live. Outer and inner work — both are needed.

What are you making in life? How is your outer life affecting your inner life, and how is your inner life affecting your outer life? What is the invisible joinery that keeps you rooted and grounded when the unexpected — and perhaps the unpleasant — happens? What inner preparation gives you the space to pause between stimulus and response in the daily flow of life? Is there enough quiet time in your life to experience the holy in the ordinary?

And so, I return to the voice of that little boy in the shop, hammer in hand: “I don’t know — I’m not done yet.” In a very real sense, neither are we. Neither is this community. Neither is God’s work in any of us. We are all being shaped, day by day, breath by breath, task by task — through our work, our play, our relationships, our joys, our doubts, our mistakes, our courage, and our love.

May the outer work of our hands flow from the inner work of our hearts. May attentiveness soften our reactivity. May acceptance ease our self-doubt. And may gratitude open us to the sacred presence that holds us in every moment.