Daily Office as Gospel

Recently, I was at the Emergent Conversation Theological Conference at Yale with Miroslav Volf. There has been something about the Daily Office that has rang true, but I couldn't put my finger on it until this evening. At the conference, Volf talked about being "psychologized" as opposed to being presented with Gospel during many church services in his life. I've been pondering this over the last couple of weeks. I can't say I have a great definition of this, but in the Daily Office, I find an opportunity to refresh what the Gospel means as ritual and conversely experience God deeply. Almost like living out the Apostle's Creed with God touching and changing in the process.

George Guiver in the book Company of Voices connected the dots with Gospel and the Daily Office in the power of anamnesis ("remembrance... to call forth the actual presence here and now of the person and deeds commemorated...), how it helps reinforce our place in the world, helps us to not forget our beliefs, redefines our understanding of time (rather than tagging random events into a string of chronology which is out of control and featureless/helpless/hopeless, the Daily Office provides a pattern and continutity with time that connects us to God's cosmic incarnation and redemption in Christ), and as we grow in God our understanding of scripture and His ways grow. I love the section, "It (Daily Office) acts like stitching along the join between the two dimensions, each stitch forcing us to hold together both history and the eternal in our daily loves. It will not let us forget that other time - the time of... Jesus which is ever present in the eternal time of God."