Do you ever feel that some days are full of the mundane? A case in point: another “normal” day begins. Up at 6 to get our son off to school, our daughter needs waking at 6.45, and, as per usual, takes an age to have breakfast and get ready for the drive to school. Trying to avoid the traffic jams, a one hour round trip to school and back to the Well, where e-mails need answering - I’m sure they are reproducing over the weekend! Time to prepare for a mentor’s meeting, to think about the teaching schedule, then we begin the round of meetings and classes. Lunch at 11.00, then more classes. my daughter arrives back at 3.30, and myself or my wife (usually myself!) head back home to get her homework done, to prepare dinner, to catch up with our son before he disappears into his books and homework. After dinner (with the requisite phone call interruptions), the usual round of washing up, washing clothes, answering more e-mails, showers and stories before bed, and before long another day is over.
Does sound rather mundane, doesn’t it? Not the stuff of inspiring missionary reports, but real life as it often is, even for missionaries! a large proportion of our lives are like this, and cannot be avoided. There are responsibilities that all of us have in life that just go around and come around. It is so easy to feel a certain disconnect between the mundane and the miraculous, victorious, overcoming life we believe we are to live, the way the message of Jesus is so often portrayed. And yet...
The good news of Jesus occurs in the midst of mundanity. The Jews had had 400 years of “same,same” a stunning silence from the Almighty after the last of the prophets had laid down his pen and retired unheard. Visions and dreams of the Messiah had been imagined and expounded, many of them conflicting, but when Jesus was born, despite the angelic fanfare and the miracles surrounding His birth, he was unrecognized as the savior by many, because he was not spectacular enough- looking just like an ordinary boy from a backwoods town in a backwoods area of a backwoods country, not looking like the all-conquering king people wanted. But it is precisely here that the miraculous occurs, not on another plain of existence, but in the here and now, the stuff of daily life. Jesus, the Mystery of God, enters into the mundanity of life to suffuse it with hope, with purpose, with Life, with the miraculous.
And it is still the same; it is as we walk through the mundane, welcoming Jesus to be with us, that the miraculous occurs; a Christmas party to which we have invited strangers results in their finding a place called Home, and an opportunity for them to enter the Kingdom is opened up; a simple word of encouragement to a fatherless man becomes a message of hope as he meets the true Father; an opportunity to work at making jewelry provides an escape from a life of sexual slavery; a trip to the beach with two girls whose mother has left them brings joy to their hearts and a smile to their faces; a cup of coffee with friends becomes a holy place, where the mundane and the Mystery mingle in laughter, deep discussion and sweet fellowship. We are too ready to flee the mundane wherever possible, and to seek the thrill of the miraculous, as witnessed by the popularity of revival meetings, healing and prophecy conferences and the like. None of these are necessarily bad, but if we focus on them we are in danger of missing the miraculous in the mundane, of not practicing the Presence of Christ in the everyday. As we practice the Presence, the mundane undergoes transformation to the miraculous, and we will see God at work.
I could write more, but the kids need feeding- time to meet with Jesus in the mundane again!
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