Glory in the Mundane

My good friends give me a bit of grief for not being much of a blogger. They are teasing me about my lack of prodigious output. This, of course, is true as one can tell by looking at my three postings. I am not exactly burning up the blogosphere. I am not a rocket man and I am not burning out my fuse up here alone.

Part of the teasing is spot on. As my wife often says, there is much truth in jest. We are a mixed bag of sinful and righteous motives. As David prayed, we have enough trouble with our presumptuous sins let alone our secret faults. One of my secret faults and one of the reasons I don’t like blogs is that I want folks to think that I write well or am smart. There is nothing at all wrong with wanting to write well or to increase in knowledge and wisdom. These are holy pursuits. Blogging, journaling, writing are disciplines and we are to renew our minds by God’s word and be transformed.

Somewhere in my mixed bag of motives I want to be grand without the discipline, so much of the time I won’t take the first step. I fall into the trap of those in Judah who despised the day of small things.

Well, today was one of the days where I took part in a mundane, seemingly ordinary, teeny-weeny thing. I helped to clear out an office or storage closet, depending on how you look at it. However, my friend Shane has reminded me that God reigns over all things, even the smallest of them, and He does. Clearing this office was faith in action. It was walking in the Spirit and allowing God to reign in the small things. We were helping to organize the office for the headmaster of Dominion Classical Christian Academy.

Thinking on these things recalled to mind a quote that I often heard was attributed to Luther. In my memory, the quote went something like this: “To God, a maid changing a diaper is just as glorious as the preaching of the gospel.” A quick internet search turned up Luther’s sermon The Estate of Marriage. The search also landed me on Gene Edward Veith’s blog, Cranach. He had culled out the following from the sermon which drips with the glory of the mundane:

Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason, takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife [emphasis mine, the husband is doing this, WOW.], provide for her, labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? 0 you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful. carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.”

What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labour, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”

Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil’s fools.

Drudgery? Bitterness? Ingratitude? Complaint? These are the flags of unbelief. They are a sure sign of a lack of faith. Notice how Luther compares that clever harlot natural reason with acting in the Spirit. He is talking about worldliness versus Godliness. He is looking at the Martha and Mary problem from a different perspective or perhaps a more correct one. Remember, Martha was so concerned with keeping house while Mary was at the feet of Jesus. We tend (at least I do) to think of Mary in a Thomas Kinkade light of detached reality. We think this way about doing things in the Spirit too. Our age is still a very gnostic one. Mary was listening to Christ’s teaching not merely staring at him all glassy-eyed. She was having her faith built up for action. As James tells us faith must be active, must be accompanied by works. I have heard Doug Wilson say several times that faith flies from our fingertips. I like that.

The Brethren of the Common Life created schools based on classical methods and, as a result, sowed seeds in the 14th century that led, in part, to the Reformation of the 16th century. I am certain that they were entrenched in a great deal of monotonous drudgery and may have even had to move furniture. O Fie! But they had faith and were obedient in the Spirit. We, their heirs, had the Reformation for gain.

So, we were not merely moving furniture. We were laying a foundation that 200 years hence will bear similar fruit not because we are good but because God is faithful. We were and are standing on the shoulders of giants. We are always reforming, Semper Reformanda.

Zerubbabel has his plumb line in hand. The stones of the living temple are being put into place. Soon the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as water covers the sea.