There was nothing particularly unusual about this morning. I woke up to summons from my dear husband searching for his specs and stuff, all of which his wife seemed to perfectly remember while still half asleep. Woke up Abhi and did his morning routine. Spread veggie omelettes and ghee toast with Bournvita and milk on the table. Finished up breakfast. Cleaned up the mess. Sat down for family worship. Swimming, check. Wrote messages and emails. Prayer, check. Lunch prep. Homeschool lessons. Counseling. On and on, the routine never decayed.
There was nothing particularly unusual about this morning. Yet something began to bother me. Perhaps the unusual bother was in the mundaneness of it all. Do all these simple trifles of everyday life really add up to something more meaningful and rewarding? Why does the heart long for a holy climax, a more glorious ending to a drab life? Why does it always look for the extraordinary ending to the ordinary meanderings? Or is it just dust we return to, not stardust?
Think about it for a moment. What would life be like if you went to work to do your job expecting no pay checks, no performance reviews and no pats on the back. Would you even get up to go to work? What would it be like to get up and work out everyday if the weight machine clocked the same weight each day? Or running that pitiful treadmill that doesn’t move you beyond an inch? Or how about being an office admin sending out emails or a data entry operator punching in numbers? These are not creative jobs that get the oohs and ahas, right? What does it feel like in the ebbing years of a life, in the corner of one’s own home, unwanted and wasting? Cornered, maybe? Or when someone lays dying on a bed for days and years without end, with nothing but a wall between them and death? On my morning walk, I saw an old lady sit outside her mud-shed and clean out grain with a sieve. I envied her pace of life. Perhaps she envied my sense of freedom. For a brief moment, I pondered her life. All she knew would be sieving and cleaning and slaving for someone else. How does one live through all this routine purposelessness? Or was I only seeing a world that began and ended with me as life’s greatest purpose?
Perhaps my compass wasn’t pointing North at all!
It dawned on me then that somehow, somewhere, I became the center of my existence. My glory became the measure of my well-being. Encouragement from others became the fuel for good work. But in the end, all the pats, the paychecks, the ahas and the applauses will still not add up to a sense of purpose and worth.
If we are mere stardust, we will all be blown away. We are more than that. Yet, I thought so little of it.
In his book, The Praying Life, Paul Miller eloquently gives us a window into the secret life of Jesus. He was about His Father’s business all the time, not his own. He did what He saw His Father doing. He was sent by the Father. He was with the Father at all times. He quotes, “Jesus defines himself only in relationship with his Heavenly Father … Because Jesus has no separate sense of self, [not that He is not a separate person but He is not, in the American sense, an “individual”] he has no identity crisis, no angst. Consequently, he doesn’t try to ‘find himself’. He knows himself only in relationship with his Father. He can’t conceive of himself outside of that relationship”. Jesus was content, well, He was blissful in being lost in union with the Father and the Spirit. He didn’t care if His self had no worth in the world. He didn’t pick up a fight with His Father over the plan that He would have to be born in a stinking cowshed. Or that He would live most of his inconspicuous life sawing wood. Or that someday, He would be beaten, mocked, spat upon and cursed at. He tried to negotiate with the Father the cup He would have to drink from, but it wasn’t the humiliation He was concerned about. He dreaded drinking from the dregs of God’s wrath, from having a momentary suspension of His eternal communion with the Father.
Jesus’s glory wasn’t even here. It was secure elsewhere. It was secure in a Person. Jesus knew where He came from and where He was going, and therefore he got down to do the dirty work of sanctifying sinners (John 13: 3-5).
Sometimes in life, nobody will notice what you do. Your days may be humdrum. During such times, you ought to only remember that Someone’s invisible eyes watch you constantly. “He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps” (Ps 121:4). I need to ask more of this question, “When He sees me now, will He smile at me?” Even a slave has great glory awaiting him, when He serves with an eye-service to His Master (Eph 6:5-7). It doesn’t matter if it is the New Year, mid-year or the end of the year. Your grand resolutions don’t matter, but a resolve to faithfulness in small things matter every year. Consistency matters, even in the mundane. Commitment matters, even to the smallest people. Courage, even if only a little, matters when you are cornered.
An early 20th century Physicist once posted a thought experiment with this question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Some argue that the answer is no. Sound implies having a perceptive sense and is absent in the absence of a receptor. Nobody heard the sound. It doesn’t matter that a tree even fell. What a waste, one thinks.
Yet there are faithful saints, little known, who fell with none to record their life nor death, whose glory will be heard throbbing heaven’s throne room, on that glorious day.
Pray that we will all be found in such company.