A Primer on “Every Moment Holy” — Finding God in the Ordinary
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We’ve spent years in conversation with many hundreds of Christian thought leaders, asking them questions. Among these questions is this: What resources have made the biggest difference in your spiritual life? Their answers have been remarkably consistent. This is one of the most recommended.
There is a liturgy for morning coffee. There is a liturgy for changing diapers. There is a liturgy for the death of a dream and another for the loss of electricity and another for weeping without knowing why.
This is the world of “Every Moment Holy” — Douglas McKelvey’s collection of prayers for the parts of life the church has rarely thought to bless. Since its release, the book has become a quiet phenomenon, passed from friend to friend, read aloud at kitchen tables and bedsides, carried into the ordinary hours where most of life actually happens.
Liturgy Beyond the Sanctuary
The Christian tradition is rich with prayers for the great moments: birth and death, marriage and ordination, the bread and the cup. But what about the rest? What about the laundry and the commute and the meal you are too tired to cook? What about the anxious night or the project that failed or the bonfire with friends that felt, for a moment, like a glimpse of the kingdom?
McKelvey — a songwriter, author, and longtime collaborator with artists like Andrew Peterson — saw the gap and began to fill it. The result is a book that refuses to divide life into sacred and secular. Every task, every sorrow, every small pleasure is treated as a place where God might be met, if only we had words to recognize him there.
“Douglas McKelvey’s liturgies have a way of turning our hearts toward God in the midst of our everyday lives. It’s a gift to the church.”
What the Prayers Actually Sound Like
The liturgies are written in a style that feels both ancient and immediate — echoing the Book of Common Prayer but rooted in the textures of modern life. A prayer for the preparation of a meal acknowledges the work of hands and the gift of provision. A prayer for beginning a book invites the reader to approach the page as an act of worship. A prayer for moments of fear offers words when your own have run out.
Some are joyful: a liturgy for the enjoyment of bonfires in the night, celebrating creation and community. Others are raw: a liturgy for the death of a dream, giving language to grief when an aspiration has quietly died. All of them assume that God is present in the moment — and that naming his presence changes how we inhabit it.
The effect is cumulative. Read enough of these prayers, and you begin to see the sacred everywhere — not because you have added religion to ordinary life, but because you have recognized what was always there.
A Book You Will Keep Within Reach
“Every Moment Holy” is not a book you read straight through and shelve. It is a book you keep on the counter or the nightstand, reaching for it when the moment calls. Parents have read the liturgy for changing diapers in the middle of the night. Friends have prayed the bonfire liturgy aloud under the stars. Grieving readers have found words for losses they could not name.
The book has since expanded into multiple volumes, each one extending the reach of liturgy into new corners of life. But the invitation remains the same: to stop treating the ordinary as a wasteland between spiritual highs, and to discover instead that every moment — even this one — can be holy.
Every Moment Holy is available in print and digital editions from major retailers and at everymomentholy.com.