# A Rule of Life You Can Keep

> A rule of life sounds like a regimen we’ll break by week two. Graham Hill suggests seeing it instead as a trellis: a few gentle rhythms that hold us steady while we grow

By Graham Joseph Hill · 12 November 2026 · Features

Canonical: https://insights.uca.org.au/articles/a-rule-of-life-you-can-keep/

Most of us hear the phrase “rule of life” and feel our shoulders tighten. It sounds like a regimen we’ll break by the second week, one more standard to measure ourselves against and come up short. The word underneath it tells a kinder story. The Latin regula named the trellis a gardener sets beside a young vine, the frame that holds a growing thing steady so it can climb toward the light. A rule of life is that trellis for the soul, the structure love leans on while it grows.

Psalm 1 hands us the picture whole. The blessed person is “like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither” (Ps 1:3). The Hebrew carries the sense of a tree transplanted on purpose, set down deliberately where the water runs, its roots drinking from a source it didn’t dig. That’s what a rule does for us. It plants you within reach of the streams, so that on the days you feel dry the water is already close.

Notice how the first believers built theirs. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). Four settled rhythms, held in common, repeated until they became the shape of a shared life. They gave themselves to these things because the Spirit had been poured out on them and they longed to stay near the fire. Their rule grew from grace already received, and it carried them.

Here’s where the words “you can actually keep” earn their place. A rule holds when it fits the life you’re living, so begin small enough to sustain. One fixed time of prayer. One Gospel read slowly across a week. One shared meal, one day set aside for rest, one practice of giving. Grace welcomes your effort and asks for faithfulness at a scale you can carry, and a trellis of three sustained rhythms holds more weight than ten you abandon by Lent. Add slowly, as the vine grows into the space you’ve built.

A rule kept in secret has a way of showing in public. The person planted by the streams yields fruit in season, and that fruit is always for others: the neighbour fed, the stranger welcomed, the tired friend who finds you steady because you’ve been drinking somewhere they can’t see. Your hidden rhythms become the reason you have something to give when the day asks it of you.

So build the trellis this month. Choose two or three rhythms, write them where your eyes will land, and keep them with the gentleness you’d offer a friend. The growth is God’s to give. Your part is to stay planted, close to the water, letting the love that first found you draw you up toward the light.

Filed under: Rule of life, Spiritual practices, discipleship, Psalms, advent