Making Meaning of the Mundane

This past Monday night, I attended a Women’s Communion in our community.  I thought I’d be participating in the Lord’s Supper, and discovered instead a wonderful fellowship meal awaiting us, where I was fed up both physically and spiritually.  I was especially happy to be there, considering the speaker was my former “teacher/mentor” from the class I no longer could attend after I started working.  She is retiring and this was her last chance to address us all, and she didn't fail us.  After thirty years of ministry, she spoke about all the things she’s learned “since I was perfect.” Perfect, right?!?!

There are many things that will stay with me from her short talk.  How she’d rather not say she’s been used by God, because she’s been used by a lot of people and that’s not what God is about.  How if she’s got everything under control, watch out, because she’ll be controlling you next! How we need to eat up Scripture, but at the same time, find passages that we can sit with, because they will provide light in the darkness for us.  (She has to change out her Bible every five years because they wear so.  How many Bibles do I have sitting around my house that are in pristine condition?) But the one that I’ve been mulling around the most is how most of our lives will be mundane moments, and God is still in those moments. 

Maybe it’s because my life no longer feels exotic.  I still posted pictures from our most recent Thanksgiving break, and we did go out looking for adventure, but the Red River Gorge isn’t exactly the Red Sea.  And before you think I’m forgetting all the mundane moments we had in Egypt, (all the hanging of laundry, all the walks to the supermarket, all the gardening), I haven’t.  They just all seem that much harder than the things I do around the house here, making them more memorable and less mundane, I guess. 

Here, I’m struggling with making lunches, driving to work, going grocery shopping, making the rounds to lessons, helping the girls with their homework, etc.  They all seem “dull, lacking interest or excitement,” and especially “of this earthly world rather than a heavenly or spiritual one.” Which is ironic, because one of the things that I struggled the most with in Egypt was our regular rounds of crisis that occurred just about every six weeks! It was exhausting living a life of constant crisis management, going from crisis to crisis to crisis, year after year after year, and now, as I live a life that is basically crisis-free, where I haven’t had anything happen that merits even the slightest rush of adrenaline, I’m searching for meaning in the mundane.

The other day I mentioned to someone that I’ve taken on a new mission field—working at a public school.  But that’s not really fair to say.  There is need everywhere.  And my need right now is to become aware of what God is doing around me and in me, how He is working for my good and the good of others even as I add another slice of peanut butter bread to a lunchbox.  Because the mundane ceases to be mundane when the Lord is invited to participate with us.        

-->

Lord, help me to seek you and your righteousness even when I feel there is no need.  Make me aware of Your presence, and Your desire, to participate in my life.  Hold me, walk with me, go with me. And turn my every day into Your heavenly way.