Life Is Mundane
There is an ordinariness to life. Most days are not filled with remarkable and extraordinary events, but a succession of events that are very—dare I say it?—mundane.
To say “life is mundane” sounds pessimistic. Or fatalistic. It sounds like one has resigned himself to inescapable ordinariness—he has given up his dreams and become satisfied with humdrum.
Yet there is a rhythm of life that really is a succession of ordinary events.
I sometimes wonder how many days of my life are going to be accounted by my daily chores. I just checked. Adding up the four minutes a day I spend brushing my teeth, more than one day per year (24.33 hours!) is spent standing over a sink combing my teeth and drooling. If I live to the age of eighty, I will spend some eighty-one days of my life doing that task. Talk about mundane!
How many days of my life will similarly be consumed by:
Washing, folding, and putting away laundry?
Mowing and edging the lawn?
Paying bills, accounting for weekly expenditures, and updating my financial accounts?
Checking email? (And throwing away spam emails?)
Making meals and then cleaning up meals?
Packing a bag for the gym and then another bag for the day?
Getting haircuts?
Taking my children to school?
Feeding my pets?
You get the picture. There is so much that we do that doesn’t seem to account for anything significant. How can we impact the world and make a difference with a list of things like the above? Those aren’t tasks of which we dreamed in high school and college; those weren’t the expectations we had for “making the world a better place to live.” Where is the glory and the joy in those tasks? Or is there?
Yes, there is indeed. When the apostle Paul talked about God’s glory and how we manifest it, he chose two of the most mundane things imaginable—“Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). God’s glory is exhibited in food and drink. In fact, Paul’s words were written in the context of a question about whether food offered to idols can be purchased from the secular market and then eaten privately at home or even in the context of a meal with friends. So Paul essentially said that there is glory for God in what food we eat, what beverage we drink, where we purchase those foods and drinks, and with whom we eat those items. It doesn’t get more mundane than that, and yet God is glorified in all those tasks.
How is God glorified when we do the ordinary? He is glorified in those tasks when we do them from a desire to be faithful to our calling. Every moment in every day I have a calling in whatever role I am functioning in that moment (husband, father, friend, citizen, mentor, employee, etc.). Even if that task is mundane, if I do it in an effort to fulfill my God-given responsibility for that moment, He is honored and I have done something significant.
Similarly, Jesus says that the simple and mundane affairs of life are massive heart revealers: “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much” (Luke 16:10). In other words, if I am unfaithful with my bills then I can’t be trusted with more “important” responsibilities. So doing the mundane is not just mundane; it is filled with opportunities to express my contentment with God’s decreed order for the big events of my life and for the simple and easily forgotten moments of life.
Oswald Chambers summarized this idea well when he wrote, “The test of a man’s religious life and character is not what he does in the exceptional moments of life, but what he does in the ordinary times, when there is nothing tremendous or exciting on.”
Is your every day filled with the mundane? Give thanks to God. He has given you an opportunity to glorify Him in all those moments.
This blog was originally posted on Words of Grace.