Do you feel bogged down and overwhelmed by your daily?
Do you wake up and feel like you are just getting back on that treadmill again, trying to get from sunrise to sunset and sunrise again amidst the messes and meltdowns and monotony?
Is there hope?
As a mum in a refugee camp, the treadmill of my everyday looked like dirt everywhere, all the time, occasional flying ant invasions of my entire kitchen, heavy rain that destroyed buildings, hiding from the oppressive midday heat and ensuring we had enough water for our daily needs.
As a mum in Australia the treadmill of my everyday still looked like lots of dirt as we renovated a house, different messes of toys and unused timber and dust, trying to find lost things like keys and children’s toys, consistent loving and disciplining my 3 year old, and trying to tick off my to do list whilst giving my children the attention that they need, and navigating through daily text messages and email.
This treadmill can be all consuming, especially if loneliness and isolation are in the mix. Which is often the case for us mums.
How do we keep hope alive?
Tish Harrison Warren has written a great book, called ‘Liturgy of the Ordinary’. Framed around an ordinary day of tooth brushing, making the bed, lost items, emailing, coffee drinking, eating, and relating to people she explores how we need our mind reprogrammed to see the sacred and holy moments amidst our mundane and messy every day. I read it after writing the first four posts in this series.
As I have read through this book I have been challenged to flip my normal average day of seeming insignificance upside down. To take account of how I subconsciously rank the importance of my daily activities. To attribute more value to the little daily chores that actually consume most of my day and less importance to the ‘big things’ that are done before men. And as I keep doing this I keep learning about the upside down Kingdom of God to which Our Father calls us to be a part.
Here’s three beautiful truths about our average normal day that she emphasises:
1. Before we do anything we are beloved.
2. We can worship out of our everyday ‘road side ditches’.
3. We can train ourselves to be attentive to the details of our ordinary every day and find the sacred.
Here’s how I’ m applying these truths to my average ordinary day
1. BELOVED
Since reading this book I have become slightly more diligent in making my bed. Tish challenged me to use this simple initial task of the day as a trigger to remember we start the day beloved. And no matter what mess, or meltdown or mountain top experience that happens throughout the day we remain beloved.
2. ROAD SIDE DITCHES
Tish calls our everyday messy moments, ‘road side ditches’. However suggests that they have purpose: ‘These moments unveil my true fears … and my idolatry of ease ‘I just want things to run smoothly’. They cast light on our brokenness. They show areas of our lives that need repentance and healing.
Road side ditches are opportunities. Opportunities for faith and intimacy, for choosing Joy over despair and mercy instead of judgement. Tish further writes, ‘I need to cultivate the practice of meeting Christ in these small moments of grief, frustration and anger, of encountering Christ’s death and resurrection, this big story of brokenness and redemption in a small, gray, stir crazy Tuesday morning.’
From the lost keys to the white ant invasion, our response to these daily road side ditches are to be placed before God as an offering.
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. (Romans 12:1 Message)
3. ATTENTIVENESS
Going against the tide of our fast-paced culture, we need to train our muscles of enjoyment. We can do this by paying attention to the little details of life.
“As busy, practical, hurried, and distracted people, we develop habits of inattention and miss these tiny theophanies in our day. But if we are fully alive and whole, no pleasure would be too ordinary or commonplace to stir up adoration.”
As I read this, I felt like Tish was giving more words to the thoughts stirring in my heart. That coffee or the chat with a friend, or the time spent with our children are not too ordinary to be sacred. The dust storm or lost keys not to frustrating to stir up adoration and worship.
Our faith needs to be resilient enough to touch our mundane everyday life.
The messes, meltdowns and mundane moments come to test the genuineness of our faith. So do the mountain tops. A right response results in praise and honour of our Lord Jesus. Living in such a way shows that our Hope is alive.
Here’s one of my favourite scriptures in first Peter.
3 Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead 4 and into an inheritance that is imperishable, uncorrupted, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. 5 You are being protected by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 You rejoice in this,[b] though now for a short time you have had to struggle in various trials 7 so that the genuineness of your faith—more valuable than gold, which perishes though refined by fire—may result in[c] praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 You love Him, though you have not seen Him. And though not seeing Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 because you are receiving the goal of your[d] faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:3-9)[e]
Love in Christ to you all
Hope
FURTHER READING
Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren
Hallelujah in the Mountains 