I'll lead this entry off with a quote from Oswald Chambers that JD sent to me about a week ago:
"Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship to God that shows itself amid the irrelevancies of human life. When you obey the call of Jesus Christ, the first thing that strikes you is the irrelevancy of the things you have to do, and the next thing that strikes you is the fact that other people seem to be living perfectly consistent lives."
My implication by this quote is not that I have, by any means, perfected my walk with God but, rather, that I resonate with this irrelevancy that he talks about. I'm struck by it on a fairly regular basis. I joke about the TPS reports I write and the Matrix that I plug into each day. I feel the apparent disconnect between what I do for eight hours each day and what I feel is my purpose in life.
But as of late, God has faithfully began to provide me with a more helpful way of looking at the same situation. Here's another quote I read the other day about brother Lawrence in the book, the practice of the presence OF GOD:
"Although he had a great dislike for kitchen work, he developed quite a facility for doing it over the fifteen years he was there. He attributed this to his doing everything for the love of God, asking as often as possible for grace to do his work. He said that he was presently in the shoe repair shop, and that he liked it very much. He would, however, be willing to work anywhere, always rejoicing at being able to do little things for the love of God."
This quote made me think, what if, instead of being here at work, I was on a spiritual retreat at a monastery with brother Lawrence (it sounds kinda silly but just go with me on this). In such a place I would know going in that the goal was to increase my intimacy with God and, to that end, I would first need to learn how to prepare myself for such intimacy. In such a context, it would make perfect sense to be tasked with something like washing dishes or scrubbing floors. These kind of simplistic tasks are designed not to challenge the mind with their complexity but to teach humility and simplicity. Theses tasks would leave ample space in one's mind to contemplate God, to quiet one's soul enough to actually feel the presence of God. Just this last weekend, I had the opportunity to help my church renovate our building by pulling carpet staples up from a stairway. This extremely monotonous task seemed to pose no problem for me. I rather enjoyed the opportunity to do something simple to serve God and to take the opportunity to talk with God about life.
With all of these thoughts swirling in my head, it occurred to me that I have been given some very similar "monastic tasks" at my current place of employment. But, in this space, I have not valued simplicity or the opportunity I have to contemplate and talk to God. I see it as a drudgery and I'm bitter for the whole experience.
So I've decided that a change of approach is necessary. Each morning, I have begun to ask God for patience, humility, and the grace to my job well out of love for him. During the day, I look forward to activities that leave much of my brain free to think about God and I look for opportunities to love and serve my coworkers.
I'm almost positive that at some point I blogged about my desire to find the Kingdom in this space. To pray and wait until I began to see God breaking into this place so that his presence is apparent to me and everyone. These recent thoughts have been very exciting to me as they represent a possible to answer to that prayer from God. Could such an attitude actually make it possible to turn this entire building into my own personal monastery? Surely this would signal God's entrance into this space - a breaking in of his Kingdom. This is pretty exciting for me. God has begun to infuse meaningless things with purpose and irrelevancy with its own importance. It's still so new, but I am experiencing a profound monotony here that has brought me a lot of joy and has almost immediately made my spirituality more provocative to those around me.
2 comments :
To give credit to our quote, it's actually Oswald Chambers, but that's good enough. It's hilarious when people get the last name wrong, but make it sound so similar.
He's dead, though, so whatever.
Hehe, yeah, I'll tell you Snook, we all go through this stuff, as far as I can tell. But what truly blessed God's heart the most: our sincere joy of doing stuff like Ignites and having lunch with our church friends, or persevering and doing the things we're supposed to be doing that would most readily reach those who are not part of His family (yet), though we see no immediate point in doing them? Obviously, there's no easy answer, because I believe God loves both situations. It's safer to say that God would enjoy our work when we have a heart to do it for Him.
Okay, so let's say we KNOW we're supposed to do that, to have the attititude of Christ. The problem most people have is actually figuring out how to do it. I know, I'm Captain Obvious. The point is that it's different for everyone. But asking for God's guidance and presence as you try to figure it out is better than trying to figure it out on your own for the sake of figuring it out so you can feel better about your relationship with God. In a way, and Oswald comes through a LOT with this kind of idea, it's not how you FEEL about your relationship with God, it's your relationship with God that truly counts. How it's actually going.
And I think it comes back to being truly related with God through all the things you do, irrelevant they may seem or not. Once you have the proper relationship with God, everything falls into place, and you can actually more easily persevere through stupid ass stuff like TPS reports without worrying that your relationship with God is suffering.
And lastly, I'm not saying everything's easy anyway. No matter what, God disciplines those He considers His children. Those worthy of His discipline, you might say. What a great thought to end on, eh? "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,..."
Ah, good catch, it IS Oswald Chambers (although Oswald Sanders does have some pretty good books himself too).
You're right man, faith is 90% obedience and 10% feeling. That's hard in a culture that's 90% feeling about everything. And when our walk with God is going well we can't expect God to take away our troubles but to help us through them. You ended with a quote from James that ends by basically saying that if a trial is allowed to run its course (through perseverance) we'll see purpose or at least value in having gone through it. After six months of work, I feel like I'm finally starting to get there. Praise God (on many levels)!!!
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