The sun gleams and warms my face as May breezes blow. Daffodils nod.
Hope slides down her little orange slide. Plops to the ground. Eyes squinting, hair blowing, she braves the wind and goes at it again.
Gideon sits barefoot on cool sand in his turtle sandbox and digs, little lips reverberating the rumbling noise of toy trucks pushing heaps of dirt, mounding up, piling high, and flattening again.
Birds sing. Bees drone. The earth turns in this steady pace on its course around the sun.
And all the while God exists.
While I sit and read.
I wonder if we should build a fence around the backyard, and where exactly to plant a garden, and if we could hopefully have a pergola built this year, and what to do about those bats living between the siding of our house.
Hope gets stuck and cries, Gideon yells for me to watch his trucks work, and a plastic bucket blows onto the road.
God exists. And I sit a spell just to breathe in Spring.
I fold laundry, pick up scattered toys, wonder how to organize this place. I call Brent at work to ask him when he's comin' home for lunch.
God exists.
I feed the goldfish.
And sometimes it just hits me as strange. Not that God exists, but that God exists and my day is full of all these ordinary things. Because if God exists—the God who spoke and there was light, who formed all us children from the dust of the ground—a God who always is and always was, who bent down to breathe life into our very lungs, well, then shouldn't we be doing something else?
I rinse out a sippie cup.
But, there is this: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).
And there's this: “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).
And when God made me, didn't He know that most of my life would be mostly eating and drinking, and sleeping and cleaning? And since He exists, shouldn't that change the way I go about all my eating and drinking and everyday doing? My in and out, just living?
And since the angels in heaven always worship Him, those other-worldly creatures who never doubt that He just is, shouldn't I be worshiping Him, too? When I'm at the sink and in the middle of the laundry, and when I'm doing the holding and when I'm being held?
And shouldn't I be still and quiet in my heart, that reverent sort of awe of Him, even in the rush of things, simply because He exists?
God exists. There's no such thing as ordinary.
This awareness of Him in the humdrum of life—it changes everything.
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on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 9:15 am
I would imagine if Brother Lawrence (The Practice of the Presence of God) was still alive, he would resound
with a hearty amen! I will add my "amen" too!
Blessings,
Arlene
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 9:16 am
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 9:34 am
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 10:06 am
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 11:38 am
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 12:17 pm
I enjoy the ordinary and ordinary becomes a large blessing as I age. Consistency day in and day out proves to me that Jesus is the same, yeterday, today, and will be forever.
The secret is not complicated. Because you didn't have an iPod jammed in your ear, you could hear the delightful children, bees buzzing, and calm quiet surrounding your heart.
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 12:33 pm
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 12:50 pm
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 2:16 pm
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 4:07 pm
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 7:17 pm
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 7:26 pm
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 11:54 pm
I read recently that a hundred years ago more people stopped to read the Bible because there was supposedly "more time." No, there were just fewer distractions. We are blessed to have "more" in our time and culture now, but we have to be careful that the enemy doesn't use our more to make us less for God. You captured that concept... in the ordinary things, we can "be still" and sense God's presence. Whether we are a mom of young children or a grandma with opportunities to leave a legacy... we still need to rest in our awareness of the Lord.
on Friday, May 18, 2012 at 10:45 am
on Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 7:27 am
All these ordinary days filled with the same tasks seem so overwhelming to me lately. I feel like there has got to be something more I should be doing.
on Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 8:27 pm