From My Heart to Yours
• Jan. 3, 2007 - Reflections for Christian Homemakers
Between Walden and the Whirlwind, by Jean Fleming, p. 99-100:
The acid test of Christianity is not giving our life at the stake or in the lion's den, but giving it little by little, day after day, moment by moment, a drop at a time, in the common duties of life assigned to us. These tasks seem too small in themselves to have any significance, but their cumulative effect keeps us from pursuing more "noble endeavors." Frustration grows as we feel our options shrinking, our life drained away by the mundane.
But it is not the job that determines its worth and impact; rather, it is the heart of the person approaching and executing the task. No work in itself is spiritual or secular. Prayer can be secular if is offered as a perfunctory exercise of form; sorting socks or changing the oil can become a sacrament when done with a pure heart surrendered to God. The motive of the heart either degrades or hallows all work. Scottish pastor John Caird, in a sermon preached before the Queen in 1855, said, "Religion consists, not so much in doing spiritual or sacred acts, as in doing secular acts from a sacred or religious motive."
God gave unfathomable dignity to common labor when He made His only begotten Son a carpenter, not a king or a scholar. Our Lord's dear mother, even after giving birth to God in flesh (the most awesome event in human history), still baked bread, washed clothes, and did the dishes. Christ made a fire and cooked an early-morning breakfast for His disciples after His resurrrection. God's order is not to abolish the mundane and routine from the life of the Christian, but to transform it. |
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