Can I just say how much I love calendar alerts? They’re a saving grace in my busy and often over-extended life. This one popped up Tuesday right on time to remind me to do my Philippians review, just as it does every Tuesday night at 8:00pm on the dot.

While I’m grateful for the technology that enables weekly reminders, in all actuality, the calendar alert isn’t the star here. That honor belongs to the event itself.

If you kept up with my earlier posts, you may recall I memorized the book of Philippians last year. I don’t want those nine months of hard work to go to waste, so I review Philippians weekly. That involves me reciting it from memory every Tuesday in order to keep in practice and hopefully move the text into long-term memory. Every other week or so, I read the letter after reciting it to make sure I haven’t forgotten words, phrases, entire verses or scrambled the order of different passages.

Most of the time, I’m excited to review. It takes about 20 minutes if I go straight through without interruption. Since I’m making much slower progress through 1 Peter than I had hoped, going through a completed text encourages me that this is doable. By the grace of God, I can get an entire epistle committed to memory. On Philippians, the work is done, so now I’m just enjoying the fruit. (Brief aside: I don’t mean to imply the only or even the main fruit of memorizing a long passage of Scripture is the satisfaction you feel from having memorized said passage; that’s just one of the benefits, and it’s the one that’s relevant to my discussion at this particular point.) So when the calendar alert pops up, I usually smile and go, “Oh, right! It’s my day to review Philippians. Let’s do this!”

Confession: Tuesday night when the alert popped up, I immediately burst into tears.

That’s a bit of a fake-out because they weren’t unhappy tears. To quote Gandalf out of context, “Not all tears are an evil.” Thing is, I wasn’t just mildly pleased to be reminded to review Philippians—I was completely overcome with gratitude and relief. Let’s just say the last week or so has been trying, so I’m a little raw right now. I had a few hours’ refreshment that afternoon and evening but was still feeling overwhelmed. God’s Word was the farthest thing from my mind, but then I got the reminder notification and the floodgates opened.

I realized that weekly Scripture review is such a precious routine. It’s a break from any and all craziness going on in my life. It’s 20 minutes not having to make any decisions or overanalyze any communications or worry about circumstances I can’t change or stress about decisions that are outside my control. It’s 20 minutes where the Word of God is the only thing on my mind and on my lips. It’s a grace.

Through my tears, I breathed a quick prayer of thanks for the ritual itself and for the calendar reminder that came right at the moment when I least expected and most needed to be called out of my own head. To speak truths such as, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” To be reminded, “The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the  peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” To be encouraged to “press on to make it [resurrection/sanctification] my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own.”

If you have daily or weekly habits of Scripture reading, prayer, or journaling, take a moment and think about how they’re a grace in your life and say thank you. Keep them up!  If you aren’t committed to any such rituals, I encourage you to develop them. Attending weekly worship with other believers is one great regular practice many of us can easily commit to. Habits and rituals (dare I say liturgies?) are meant as blessings, so let’s take full advantage of them! Not only do they give us a break from “reality” and from everyday stresses and anxieties, they actually invite us into deeper, longer-lasting reality.1 Peter 1:24-25 says, “For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you.”

God is spirit. He is truth. He is eternal. To contemplate Him, to meditate on His Word, to pray, to journal about truths He’s showing you and prayers He’s answering, to gather with other Christians in a local body to sing, hear the Word preached, and take the sacraments together—these things help us get and stay in tune with God and the work He’s doing in the world. And how wonderful is it that God never tires?! He doesn’t need breaks. He doesn’t even need calendar alerts.

But we do.

We are so finite. So limited in our time, in our capacity to love, in our ability to make good decisions. And we get distracted easily. We need reminders of the really real world. Not that the world we live in every day isn’t real—just that there is more to it than we can see. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24).

Once again, let me encourage you to either continue with or start up some regular routines and rhythms of grace. The benefits are tremendous! “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock” (Isaiah 26:3-4).