The Daily Office is “a” method for pursuing more ongoing communion with God. This method also goes by the name of the “Divine Hours” and is borrowed largely in concept from Peter Scazzero and his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Portions also come from a guy named Zack Eswine and Tim Keller (who writes about it at the end of his book on prayer). In reality, the method has its roots in something St. Benedict did in his monasteries back in the 6th century, which really built on principles we find in the Bible for set, or “fixed” hours of prayer (see Daniel 6:10, Psalm 119:164, or Psalm 55:17).
In general, what this method encourages is for you to have set times (known as “offices”) throughout your day where you stop, center, and commune with God through a predetermined means (known as “elements”).
How it Works
Step 1: Set the Times
The first step of setting up your Daily Office is to set the times of your offices. These are the predetermined “times of the day” that you’re going to stop and focus intentionally on communing with God.
The number of offices is up to you. You might do three offices (morning, noon, evening); you might do four (adding one right before bed). To begin with, you might just start with two and add a third once you get a rhythm down. This is totally up to you.
One helpful way to think about when to set the times of your offices is to think about transitions that happen throughout your day. For most of us, there is a transition that happens between early morning and the rest of the morning (for example, before your kids wake up or before you leave for work). Another common transition could be before or after lunch—the morning is over, and now you’re transitioning. Still another may be at the end of your work day before you return home.
Whatever you choose, seek to make it consistent each day.
Step 2: Select the Elements
The second step is to select the element(s) for each of your offices. An “element” is the what of what you’re going to do at each of your set times. Here you should feel a lot of freedom to be who God made you to be. We all connect with God in different ways. While Bible reading and prayer should serve as a foundation for all of this (and certainly find a home during one of your offices), there are also a lot of different ways we connect with God.
You might connect well with God through music or or perhaps you experience His presence the most when you are outside in His creation. For others it might be meditating on His Word, journaling, reading the Psalms, memorizing Scripture, sitting in solitude, studying theology, or taking in an audio devotion like the Daily Liturgy Podcast.
Step 3: Do It!
The third step is simply to do it! With the times of your daily offices set (Step 1) and the elements of each office set (Step 2), all that is left is to pause throughout the day, at the times of your daily offices, and commune with God through the element or elements for that office.
That should include stopping (stop doing anything else you’re doing). It should then include centering (focusing-in on the purpose of this: to remember God and commune with Him throughout the day). And then doing—actually doing the element you set out to do.
Putting It Together
Putting all of the above together, the below is an example of what a three-office Daily Office might look like. Remember: this can take shape in a lot of different ways and the below is not intended to be prescriptive but rather simply provide one example.
Morning Office (6am-6:30am):
Scripture Reading according to a Bible reading plan, and using the SOAP method for journaling.
Noon Office (12-12:05pm):
Praying a Psalm based on the “Psalms of the Day”.
Evening Office (4:20-4:30pm):
Sitting in quiet solitude and reflecting on the day.
Revisiting either the morning office and what you journaled OR the Psalm you prayed at noon.
Praying the prayer of examen.
The Bigger Picture
The whole purpose of the “Daily Offices” is to build rhythms into your life of communing with God. Each office is where you stop, center, and commune with God. However, the bigger picture goal is that over time, through continual practice of the rhythms, this would become more and more natural to you and that you’d begin to commune with God not just during your daily offices, but all day—continuously.