This is the third of four letters through the month of October calling us to keep Christ at the center of our lives. Review previous letters in this series here.

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, who stands in the midst of us. 

For the first two weeks in this series, we have looked outward. In Connexion we asked how we are belonging to one another. In Politix we asked how we are witnessing to Christ in public life. 

This week the question turns around and looks inward. Reflexion is the interior work: the honest, unhurried practice of letting Christ examine the heart that does the belonging and the witnessing. 

This is work I love and work I am committed to. For many years I have kept a personal Rule of Life. It is three questions I carry into every day: 

How might I glorify God? 

How might I point others to Christ? 

How might I love? 

They are simple to say, and yet they ask everything of me. I could answer them in an unexamined and undisciplined way. However, with an intentionality grounded in a daily rule and rhythm, these questions require deep interior work. This is the work I want to invite you into: daily practices that keep us grounded, centered and deliberate. 

Interior work matters because we live in a world crowded with noise, competing voices, and quick judgments. Election seasons only turn up the volume. Every screen, mailbox, and conversation seems to compete for our attention, stir our fears, and seek to claim our loyalty. 

Amid all this noise, it becomes easier to react than to reflect, easier to take sides than to seek understanding. Social media and algorithms intensify this tendency, rewarding what is provocative and divisive, rather than what is thoughtful, truthful, and grounded in love. 

As followers of Jesus, we are called to something deeper. We are called not simply to listen to the voices around us, but to pay attention to what is happening within us. What is shaping our thoughts? What is stirring our fears? What is claiming our hearts? 

The psalmist offers us a courageous prayer in Psalm 139: “Search me, O God, and know my heart.” Notice the invitation. The psalmist does not ask God to search them, to expose their faults or examine another’s motives. The prayer begins with oneself. Search my heart. Test my thoughts. Lead me in the way everlasting. 

Elijah, too, discovered something about listening for God. Standing on the mountain, he encountered a mighty wind, an earthquake, and a fire. Yet God was not found in those great displays of power. Instead, God met Elijah in the sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19). In a moment marked by fear, exhaustion, and uncertainty, Elijah encountered the quiet presence – the still small voice of God. 

There is wisdom here for us, especially in this season. Not every loud voice speaks truth. Not every urgent demand deserves our allegiance. And not every conviction we hold has been sufficiently examined in the light of God’s love. 

Our Wesleyan forebears understood this. They gathered in small groups and asked one another a deceptively simple question: How is it with your soul? This question is not intended to shame or judge, but to make room for grace, accountability, and transformation. Our Methodist ancestors understood that the Christian life requires more than examining the world around us. It requires a willingness to let God examine the world within us. As followers of Christ – and as those seeking to be perfected in love - we must be willing to ask what God is seeking to transform in us. 

Two English women keep me company in this work: Julian of Norwich and Evelyn Underhill. They lived six centuries apart, and each have something to teach us for the living of these days. 

Julian of Norwich lived in fourteenth-century England, a land torn by plague, a peasants’ revolt and a church divided between rival popes.  

In one vision, Julian saw a servant who ran so eagerly to do his lord’s will that he fell into a ditch. The lord looked on him with no blame, only compassion. Imagine bringing that gaze to an election season. Many of our neighbors, on every side, have run hard toward what they believe is right and stumbled. If God looks on them without contempt, we have no warrant to look on them with it. Julian also offered a simple test for the many voices that claim to speak for God: whatever moves us toward charity is of God, and whatever moves us away from it is not. 

Evelyn Underhill, a twentieth-century laywoman, wrote and led retreats through two world wars, convinced that a troubled world needs people with quiet centers. She also knew the pull of public causes. Over years of prayer, her convictions about war changed, and she held her new position with humility, even when it was unpopular. She did not take her stance from the mood of the nation. She arrived at it on her knees. And she warned that a church which forgets to center on God has nothing of its own to bring to the world’s problems.  

It would be easy to mistake these women for people who stepped away from the world. Julian lived enclosed in a small cell attached to a parish church, yet her cell had a window, and townspeople came to it with their griefs and questions. Underhill kept writing and praying in London while bombs fell around her. Neither one fled the turmoil of her age. Each went deep enough into God that she could stay present to it without being swept away. Julian could look on a frightened, divided people with the blameless gaze of God. Underhill could hold an unpopular conviction without contempt for those who disagreed. Their interior work did not wall them off from their neighbors. It was the window through which they loved them. 

Interior work is not a retreat from public life. It is what makes public life faithful. Without reflexion, connexion becomes mere affinity, and politix becomes mere partisanship. The inward look is where we find out whether Christ is truly at the center, or whether something else has quietly taken his place. 

John Wesley called these spiritual disciplines the means of grace: the ordinary channels through which God meets and shapes us. They are prayer, searching the scriptures, the Lord’s Supper, fasting, and holy conversation with one another. None of them are new. All of them are available to you today. 

Here is a simple daily pattern drawn from them. 

1. Begin with scripture. Read the Bible before you read the news or open a feed. Let God’s word be the first voice of your day. Stay with Psalm 139 this week, or read 1 Kings 19 slowly. 
2. Pray, and keep silence. Give God a few unhurried minutes. Say what is on your heart, then stop talking and listen. 
3. Choose trusted news sources. Seek out reporting rather than reaction. Read the whole story, not only the headline. Check a claim before you pass it on. Notice the political lean of the sources you trust, and read beyond them. 
4. Fast from the noise. Set aside one stretch of each day with no news, no feed and no commentary. 
5. Come to the table and to one another. Receive communion when it is offered. Find one person or a small group and ask: How is it with your soul? 
6. Examine the day. If it helps, borrow my three questions for your evening examen. Where did I glorify God today? Where did I point someone to Christ? Where did I love, and where did I fail to love? Better still, let them prompt you to write a Rule of Life of your own. 

May the Christ who stands in the midst of us also dwell deep within us. May he quiet what is anxious, heal what is hardened, and lead us in the way everlasting. 

Bishop Lanette Plambeck
Dakotas-Minnesota Area of The United Methodist Church