| | We in the Western culture are taught to invest our time as our most precious resource, and make sure we are spending so as to ensure we live for what is really important. Particularly, Christians are urged to remember that the things of earth will pass away, and that we must do the work for God that will last beyond our lives. Amy Carmichael compellingly urges us to do this in Things as They Are, in which she writes of a dream that the world’s lost are blindly walking to the edge of a cliff, and many believers neglect turning them back from falling to their deaths because we are too busy making “daisy chains” (p. 41-44). Certainly, then, it seems a sin to work on things that will fade like the flower when eternal fates hang in the balance. Yet it is possible, and eventually depressing, to take this idea too far. After all, it was important enough for God to make flowers, even though they fade. Indeed, He placed us in a life of tediousness, “vanity,” as the Teacher of Ecclesiastes says. Then is it impossible to make eternal importance of what we do with our everyday lives? No. Look at 1 Corinthians 3:12-16, Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. But what is this gold and silver which remain? I think that can be found in 1 Peter 1:6-9, In this [hope of an inheritance in heaven] you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which perishes, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and glorified, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. That’s kind of an involved passage, but did you catch what it said is proven more precious than gold tested by fire? Your faith. That faith will bring glory at the end. That, I believe, is where mundane things can become eternally important, because faith is often manifested in small, apparently temporal actions. In a mother who manages not to yell at her kid, even though she’s worn out. The nurse who cleans up, medicates, and talks to the nursing home patients who won’t remember it tomorrow. The shut-in who resolves never to complain, but rather be a joy to everyone around. A father who takes a few extra minutes to linger over a game with his children. A secretary who determines to add a little brightness to every part of the business she runs. A body shop repairman who chooses to love his work, sanding entire vehicles by hand. On this tedious world of dust where God has chosen to display His glory, it becomes a blurry line between the mundane and the supernal. C.S. Lewis in “Learning in War-Time” points out that God created us with the desire and need for things like knowledge, beauty, humor, and society, and the need often intensifies for those facing war, or any such circumstances that ostensibly would overwhelm such trivialities. Being put in a right relationship with the Creator of these things certainly does not exclude them (unless we have made them somehow hinder our obedience to Him): . . . it is clear that Christianity does not exclude any of the ordinary human activities. St. Paul tells people to get on with their jobs. He even assumes that Christians may go to dinner parties, and what is more, dinner parties given by pagans. Our Lord attends a wedding and provides miraculous wine. Under the aegis of His Church, and in the most Christian ages, learning and the arts flourish. The solution of this paradox is, of course, well known to you. “Whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest: and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not. . . The work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly “as to the Lord.”—“Learning in War-Time,” The Weight of Glory and Other Essays. One might say that these things take on eternal significance if one witnesses to lost people while doing it. But I think the witnessing isn’t exactly it. Witness is powerless without evidence of God’s hand—without the abundant life we are testifying to. The joy at all times, the peace ruling in our hearts, the grace we show at every opportunity—that is the eternity, the heavenly, in our lives. That is what makes witnessing meaningful, when we can, not just tell the way to heaven, but show heaven to a lost person. That is one of the more difficult tests facing the more sincere Christians in America—how to offer to God those necessary things that don’t seem important, and thereby live heaven in our stressful, repetitious lives. In the Bible’s meditation on the temporal and toilsome nature of life, Solomon’s insistence is on the haphazard. These things—food, sex, money, and mother earth—must always have their place in the life of any man of God, and they either make men and women devils or make them what they should be. The man of God uses these things to express his relationship to God; whereas those who do not know God try to find lasting good in the things themselves.”—Oswald Chambers, Shade of His Hand, “Time, Death, and Trifles” So why does the Eternal God make temporary things? Furthermore, why has He put mankind in a temporary world, and yet set “eternity in their heart” (Eccl. 3:11)? Perhaps we won’t truly get the eternal things down until we get the temporal down. Perhaps we wouldn’t understand how to cultivate a disciple until we know how to water a vegetable patch. Perhaps we can’t really work for our reward, unless it is as if for no reward. Perhaps we learn obedience for its own sake by doing things that don’t seem to have a purpose. Or maybe we see too dimly. Maybe, in being so frustrated with some who neglect the weightier things (Matt. 23:23), certainly the more glaring sin, some of us despise the small things (Zech. 4:10) that God rejoices in. Let us, then, be about building the worldwide, everlasting kingdom, but without despising the miniscule things. One day, we may see that the response of our faith to the temporal things has indeed left an impression on eternity. *Note: I'm going to try to write a blog about this long every week now. I need to keep my writing skills sharp and build a portfolio. Hope you enjoy. And if anyone has any ideas for subjects (*Nudges Sarah*), feel free to leave a suggestion, and we will see if I have something to say about it. |
