I've not disappeared or fallen off the face of the earth! The past several weeks have been very full. I've spent a good deal of time at our place in NY building our cabin. The physical labor has given me time to think about God, His work in the world today, and about our role in it.
I've had several conversations recently that stirred my thought process. I believe that we make walking with God far too impractical and ethereal. I am convinced that all of our life is spiritual, that if God is not found in the mundane details of our life, then we are missing the point.
A friend of mine told me of an acquaintance of his. This acquaintance had spent all his life waiting for God to do something big with his life. Now at the end of his life, he wonders if perhaps he missed God. A young man told me that he desires to do something significant for God. He is frustrated by his work. In his mind it limits his possibility of doing something significant. It seems unspiritual and disconnected with God.
We fall into a trap of assuming that the significant things God has for us will somehow propel us into a more spiritual realm. In our desire for spirituality we miss the work of God in the mundane ordinary events of life. We have bills to pay, children to raise, and grass to mow. We separate these things from God, compartmentalizing our life into our God life and then our mundane life.
To compartmentalize our life in this manner causes us to miss God completely simply because He will appear in the ordinary. The religious leaders of Jesus' day missed the Messiah. He appeared too un-Messiah like. He was rather ordinary, born out of wedlock, and in general did not meet their expectations of the Messiah.
In the same way today, the work of God is far more practical, far more earthy than we may want to admit. The original command for Adam was to subdue the earth. God never rescinded that command. Our responsibility remains to subdue the earth, to accomplish the work of God in making the earth fruitful. That doesn't sound very spiritual at all.
Yet it is in the mundane things that we find God. It is the work of God to raise our children, to change diapers, to go to work, and to pay our bills. I find God in my work, as I labor in building a cabin, as I relate to my children. If I separate my "God-life" from my everyday life, then I will miss the point! Find God in the mundane and you will discover life.
1 comment:
Mmmmm..this makes me sigh and smile to think that all of our life is spiritual and the mundane is connected to God, which brings life. If we don't truly believe this and connect with it in our hearts, so that we can actually live in this reality - we eventually become exhausted, depleted, burned out, and lifeless. Because we separate the mundane from the spiritual like you said, or from God, we exhaust ourselves because we're on a search for: God and can't find Him, which brings fear (when He's right in front of us); significance (when we already are signicant); LIFE (when it's right there); connection - with ourselves, God, and others (when that is also found by living in the the moment and being present in the here and now or the "mundane"); the list could probably go on. So, I sigh, because wow there's an incredible load taken off of us, and we can Truly Live! Yet at the same moment it makes me want to grieve how much of my life has not been lived in this reality and what was lost, but I also know that He brings freakin awesome redemption the moment we begin to live in this Truth. It's incredible, but also scary when you're coming out of being used to controlling everything and trying to make it happen instead of live in it. Ahhh, but again, there's just nothing better.
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