We are embarking upon a disconcerting season: scrutinizing self-evaluation will soon follow the revelry and tinsel. What are we doing with our lives? Where are we going? Do the things siphoning our days matter in the grander scheme?
In honest moments, we admit a certain hollowness to our lives. We wade through the messiness, and we entertain the mundane. Aware of a yearning for deeper reality, divine purpose, we look askance at messy dishes, dirty diapers, final exams and the morning commutes to the office downtown.
It seems we should be embarking on a more daring adventure, God’s Robin Hood swooping in with justice for the cheering masses, or God’s Joan of Arc inspiring the hopes of a beleaguered people. Somehow Monday mornings buried under memos or late Thursday nights buried under laundry just don’t meet up to such ideals.
And our dilemma only worsens as we view the world around us. God supposedly reigns, but it appears His situation is just as out-of-order as ours. We are called to serve God’s purposes, but it seems we get caught in the demands of the trivial and ordinary. God is called to rule, but it appears that things may have gotten a bit out of His control.
Perhaps we are mistaken on both accounts. Perhaps God’s purposes are weaved into the fabric of the mundane, and perhaps God’s rule is so absolute that He delights in seeing His power hover over chaos.
Following the teachings and ministry of Jesus offer us a contrast to our misguided concerns. Jesus saw the purposes of God fulfilled in holding a child, providing food for hungry followers and offering a kind word to an ostracized woman. Jesus thought God’s Kingdom reign was best displayed in humility, a humility offering strength unlike ours. He spoke rebuke and correction, but He never eliminated all confusion or cleaned up every mess—He simply was God in the midst of it.
And this is life, this is ministry: to simply tend to the world and the relationships God has allowed us to influence. Eugene Peterson reminds me that we view the world one of two ways. We see it either as a wasteland, spinning out of control, where sin is sovereign; or as a rose garden, in need of weeding and pruning, but a place where Grace dwells and God rules. How we work, how we play and how we live hinge on our view of the world.
I think God calls us to affirm that He is God. The stench and destruction of sin has not captured His throne or His imagination. He still rules, and the garden is still His. So we are invited to tend to the garden … His garden. Together, we till the soil of His plot. Here and there, you and me, in the grand as well as in the simple. While gardening has epiphany moments of the first spring planting and autumn harvest, there are many tiresome, almost boring, days mixed in.
So too in our experience. We may offer a cup of water or prepare a meal in Jesus’ name. We may pay the bills or go running with a lonely friend … all in His name. These are holy moments, even if mundane.
A Prayer for Deeper Reflection (borrowed from Peterson):
Teach us … [so] we have time and energy and space to realize that all our work is done on Holy Ground and in Your holy name, that people and communities in need are not wastelands where we feverishly and faithlessly set up shop, but a garden … where we work contemplatively.
