From The Rectory
As I write, it’s one of those especially dark and gloomy winter mornings. From my study I have an excellent view of the drizzle, which seems to have set in for the day. And I’ve got a few bits of boring admin, which I’ve been putting off, which I ought to grind through.
Some Christians in other parts of the world live their lives in a dramatic context of fierce persecution, but for us things are often pretty hum drum. Maybe from time to time we’re conscious of acute temptations where we might feel everything hangs in the balance and we risk throwing it all away. But I guess for most of us most of the time life, and the Christian life, often feels pretty mundane and ordinary.
And let’s face it, it is. It’s in our ordinary day to day contexts of work, family and friends that we are called to live for Jesus. Loving God and our neighbour is often repetitive. I pray and read my Bible without Damascus Road experiences of flashes of light and voices from heaven. Sometimes it doesn’t feel as if it’s doing me much good, and I can’t say I necessarily have a wonderful moving sense of the presence and power of God. Often I just plod on. And there are the routine tasks of changing a nappy, or doing the shopping, the same old commute to work, or pile of dishes or paperwork, or whatever it may be which we have to deal with. The Christian life is a long obedience in the same direction mostly in the ordinary day by day stuff of life. But these things matter to God. They’re the arena of our discipleship. Our love for God is to be worked out in how we treat our family, friends, neighbours and colleagues in the daily interactions of life, how we do our work when no one is watching, and so on.
Yet, if we could see it with the eyes of faith, there is great drama even in this. For spiritually speaking, the Bible tells us that if we are believers in Jesus we have been blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. We are united to Christ by faith in the Holy Spirit. We have died and risen with Christ and our life is hidden with Christ in God. We might sometimes feel rather lifeless, but the resurrection power of Christ is at work in us. His Spirit empowers and animates us and wants to make us more like Jesus. God looks at us in Christ and says to us, “You are my child, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.” We seek to live for Jesus in the mundane day to day, not as those who have something to earn or prove. We’re not trying to pay back a debt. We’re already more loved than we can possibly imagine. In Jesus we are rich and full. God can do more than all we ask or imagine, and he means to bring us to eternal glory.
And our domestic obedience is part of a great cosmic drama. It’s striking that in his letter to the Ephesian Christians, the Apostle Paul can go from talking about relationships between wives and husbands, parents and children, masters and slaves to spiritual warfare, the battle between good and evil, angels and demons. The village shop, the kitchen sink and the factory floor can be the frontline of something much bigger. Every person we encounter is, after all, an immortal soul, someone uniquely created in the image of God and intended to reveal something of his glory. Will we pray that God would help us to see and treat them as such?
The Apostle Paul tells us that because of the resurrection of Jesus, our labour in the Lord is not in vain. Nothing done for Jesus, motivated by faith, in the power of the Spirit, to the glory of God will be lost. Our faithfulness to Jesus is part of the vision of the Lord’s Prayer that God’s will might be done on earth as it is in heaven and that his kingdom might come. One day Jesus will transform and renew all things in the New Creation. And all those who trust in Jesus will be taken up into that wonderful future.
It might be grey and drizzly, but yet the believer has a mind-blowing song of praise and thanks to sing. The admin is no less boring and necessary, but the call to walk with Jesus and to look to the Heavenly City is an exciting one. May God open our eyes afresh to the extraordinary in the ordinary and give us grace to plod on faithfully with a supernatural joy.
The Revd Marc Lloyd
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