In reading through the book of Leviticus in my daily readings, I was struck by the range and physicality of much of the priestly work: killing animals for the offerings (more suited to being a butcher, I would have thought!), reviewing skin diseases (a doctor’s role) and inspecting houses for mould and mildew (building contractors?!) Part of me wondered when the priests ever got any time to spend in the temple with God, but this reminds me forcibly that there is actually no division between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’, that God is interested in every aspect of our lives, not just the ones we can visibly see as being connected to worship.
We find it difficult to see life in this way, and therefore constantly need our thinking renewed and transformed. Rom 12:1-2 in the Message version says, ‘So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognise what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.‘
The Bible teaches that worship involves all we are and everything we do; it is not limited to the hour or so we spend in God’s house on a Sunday. God is in everything we do, and therefore our ordinary, everday lives – involving accountancy, washing-up, fixing cars, cleaning schools, engineering, teaching, looking after children and so on – can be part of our acts of worship as we seek to allow God into every area of our lives. I can imagine if I’d been a Levitical priest grumbling about checking out infectious skin diseases (‘it’s not my job!‘), only to be forcibly reminded that we don’t get to pick and choose the ‘bits’ of jobs we like and have to take the whole package. God does not want us to live divided, disconnected lives, but to acknowledge all of life is a gift from God and He is interested in every aspect. If your day involves boring, repetitve jobs that don’t seem to ever amount to much, take heart! God is still there in the mundane and monotonous and is working in all. Our attitude is laid out in Col 3:17: ‘Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.‘
