While
we were sleeping last night, our calendars flipped to a new month. March is here! I like March for so many reasons but my
favorite is that Spring arrives later this month! I believe many of us are
ready for winter to be over. Those of us who aren’t fans of winter don’t
dislike the season just for the cold weather; it’s just that everything seems
to stop. It’s like God decided that we needed
to hibernate. There are less hours of sunlight.
Almost everything outside has died leaving very little color on the
landscape. By the end of winter, life
itself seems to slow down almost to a pace we could call drudgery. No wonder all God’s creation explodes with
life when spring arrives.
But
this year is a little different. I’m
still waiting on spring, but for some reason, God is trying to teach me (and
possibly you) that drudgery isn’t always a bad thing. God is right.
(Isn’t HE always?) We DO need a
time of hibernation; a time to slow down and recharge. However, our culture rages against the
notion. As I often say, we have evolved
into a people obsessed with a never-ending pursuit of all that is fun. We seem to run away from the mundane, the
routine – the drudgery of everyday life.
And we have passed this down to our kids, who have become creatures with
no imagination and have to be entertained every waking minute. This is one of the main reasons the next
generation has shown signs of being quitters.
The second something becomes routine, they quit and look for something
else to do until they get bored with that.
We’ve lost the art of endurance and our kids are following suit. We quit marriages, church, jobs, God. Our kids quit friendships, sports teams,
church, God. God says to endure and
persevere, but many times we do the opposite.
I see it even in social media. Facebook
posts have become nothing more than people trying to make the ordinary events
of their day sound extraordinary. Almost
like we’re embarrassed that our lives don’t resemble what we see on T.V. shows
or in commercials.
So
how did drudgery get such a bad rap? If
you think about it - isn’t most of our life spent doing basically the same
things, day in and day out? If we’re
only experiencing God in the every now and then “super” events, then we’re
simply missing too many God moments. The
great theologian Oswald Chambers wrote a timeless classic called “My Utmost For
His Highest” and in it he says that “drudgery is one of the finest touchstones
of character there is.” Think about that
statement for a minute. It makes sense
that if the world around us is dark, we can allow God’s light to shine even
more brightly in us when we’re serving Him with a cheerful, thankful heart
right in the middle of that darkness; right in the middle of all that seems
routine – boring, thankless, drudgery, if you will. And if we will arise and shine, drudgery
becomes divinely transfigured! In fact,
when the Lord does a thing through us, He always transfigures it! Drudgery is all that we do that’s apart from
the ideal. The same job with the same
people, every day. Changing the same
diapers and cleaning the same house. Enduring another class with a
teacher/instructor/professor that seems even more bored with their job than you
are with their class! And on it goes. Endurance isn’t easy. It does require the inspiration of God to go
through drudgery with the light of God upon it – but that inspiration is
available to all of us! Once we start
doing the everyday events of life with God’s light shining on them, they take
on a special new meaning. Chambers put
it this way: “After we have seen someone do the most commonplace things with
God’s inspiration, those things look different!” I agree.
Colossians 3:23 says that we should do EVERYTHING we do as if for the
Lord, and not for man. And everything,
means even the most menial tasks. So let’s
embrace the drudgery in the light of God’s inspiration. If not, we’ll miss out on way more than just
fun!
- Scott
Limerick
Worship
Pastor, BCC
