How do you balance a life of quiet contemplation, study, and prayer with a life of activity, service, and productivity with the crowd? Are they mutually exclusive? Many think you can’t balance the sacred and the secular. The truth is that busyness can distract us from contemplation & contemplation can insulate us from reality. So how we do live with an eternal focus & also manage the temporal demands that flood us daily?

Gregory the Great said, “activity precedes contemplation, but contemplation must be expressed in service to one’s neighbor”. In other words, we must move from distraction to spirit AND back from spirit to practical service of others.

The contemplative life & the active life are NOT mutually exclusive.

The Contemplative Life (Prayer/Study) EQUIPS us for the Active Life (Service/Productivity)

The Active Life (Service/Productivity) GROUNDS us for the Contemplative Life (Prayer/Study)

A balance between the crowd & the quiet is necessary to live the life Jesus calls us to live. Much of Jesus’ recorded life was spent with the crowd…serving others, healing the sick, teaching his disciples. He was able do this because He would frequently step away from the crowd, from the busyness and withdraw for prayer and contemplation.

I wish I were better at living this balance. The times that I do, I have a greater awareness that God is speaking to me in my daily experiences.