I think many of us despise the boring and the mundane, even though these make up a significantly large proportion of our time and energy. We are more interested in the spectacular (healings, miracles, mass salvation) and the glamorous (exotic holidays, buying new gadgets to entertain us) than in the ordinary jobs of everyday life which seem so utterly lacklustre and unremarkable.
As I study 1 Corinthians, I’m struck by how much time Paul – that great apostle whose gifts included teaching, miracles of healing and even raising the dead – gave to what I would call the ‘nitty gritty details’ of life. He wrote extensively about practical subjects: eating meat that had been sacrificed, how to deal with a communion service, what to do about spiritual gifts, how to deal with church discipline. And he spent quite a lot of time thinking about the practical details of organising money for relief support. (1 Cor 16:1-12, 2 Cor 8-9). Such things are not particularly exciting. Think, in modern terms, of customs forms, VAT and other forms of red tape and you get the picture!
I spend a lot of time on what might be termed the unspectacular. Putting stickers on plain goody bags to make them look attractive to people so that when we give out God’s Word at the Christmas market, they might actually keep the bag and look inside. Travelling on buses and trains to visit people in hospital. Juggling rotas so that we have people to help at coffee mornings and with the preaching of God’s Word at church. These things seem a far cry from what I’d like to do at times and often seem to take up far too much time.
But if Paul took time out to organise a collection to help needy Christians in Jerusalem, our shopping for the food bank must also be valuable. If Paul thought it was important to write about mundane things like that, then our ordinary, ‘boring’ lives must be significant in God’s bigger picture, even if we can’t see it now. Cleaning the church building, checking the insurance details, filling in the CCLI records so that Christian artists can be paid for the work they offer to God… these things are not ‘a waste of time.’ Nothing done whole-heartedly for God is a waste of time. (1 Cor 15:58)
Aaron Shust reminds us that Jesus knew all about the ordinary: ‘Forsaking majesty, embracing mundane and all of its shame.’ (‘Wondrous Love’) Matt Redman reminds us that God’s grace is not just for the mountain-top experiences but is there ‘in the everyday and the mundane.’ (‘Your Grace Finds Me’) Zech 4:10 says ‘Who dares despise the day of small things?’
God looks for faithfulness in the ordinary, boring, mundane things of life. Paul tells the Corinthians, ‘Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.‘ (1 Cor 4:2) Jesus said, ‘Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.‘ (Luke 16:10) Honour God with the ordinary, and maybe then the extraordinary will be mingled in with it!
