Lifehack - A strategy or technique adopted in order to manage one's time and daily activities in a more efficient way. (Oxford Online Dictionary)

Are you as drawn to lifehacks as I am? - you know, the ingenious (Remember MacGuyver?) ideas that show up on your Facebook newsfeed from time to time: How to separate an egg using an empty water bottle; how to slice a handful of cherry tomatoes in seconds using two saucers or plastic lids. You get the idea. If you had nothing else to do, you could spend all day reading (and trying) 100 Life Hacks to Make Life Easier or 50 Life Hacks to Simplify Your World. If you had that much time on your hands, however, you might as well do things the long or hard way:  you wouldn't need lifehacks.

We have lifehacks in school, too. They were in existence long before the term 'lifehack' was invented in 2004. Ask your upper-grade child about tricks for remembering the 9 times table, the order of mathematical operations, the names of the planets in order, or the names of the music notes on the lines of the treble staff, and you will probably learn some of them. Memory tricks (officially known as mnemonic devices) such as using the first letters of words in a sentence or phrase, putting words to music (I still sing the names of Jesus' disciples if I want to remember them.), and adding actions, are a few examples of lifehacks your children can use to "manage [their] time and daily activities in a more efficient way." (For more educational lifehacks, 'just google it'!)

Our spiritual life goes better with lifehacks too. By our example and our training, we can teach our children how to consistently live the Christian life, filled with His peace and joy. One blogger, Joshua Benton, has suggested four spiritual lifehacks which are summed up for you here:

1.Rhythm:  To live a solid spiritual life, create a rhythm of prayer and serving, work and rest.

2.Pray:  Prayer helps you refocus and reorientates where you're at and where you're going.

3.Submit:  Submitting to the wants and desires of God helps you begin to see how temporary stuff is and how eternal people are.

4.Walk with Jesus:  Learn His teachings, learn His ways, for his yoke, his teachings, are easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30). Part of the spiritual life hack is studying God's word. Meditating on it. Focusing on it….Jesus. He gets you through it all. He is present and walks with you through it all. He does the work for you. Best. Spiritual Life Hack. Ever.

https://spiritualmusclehead.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/4-spiritual-life-hacks/

Carol Cole