MonFeb92009
What is the connection between our ordinary lives and the kingdom of God? What is the relationship between God's redeeming activity and our job, our chores, our hobbies? Here is an excerpt from "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard
"He (Jesus) slipped into our world through the backroads and outlying districts of one of the least important places on earth and has allowed his program for human history to unfold ever so slowly through the centuries.
He lived for thirty years among socially insignificant members of a negligible nation, though one with a rich tradtion of divine covenant and interaction. He grew up in the home of a carpenter for the middle-eastern village of Nazareth. After his father, Joseph, died he became the man of the house and helped his mother raise the rest of the family. He was an ordinary workman: a blue-collar worker.
He did all of this to be with us, to be one of us, to arrange for the delivery of his life to us. It must be no simple thing to make it possible for human beings to recieve the eternal kind of life. But, as F.B. Faber opens one of his profound works, now 'Jesus belongs to us. He vouchsafes to himself at our disposal. He communicates to us everything of His which we are capable of receiving.'
If he were to come today as he did then, he would carry out his mission through most any decent and useful occupation. He could be a clerk or accountant in a hardware store, a computer repairman, a banker, an editor, doctor, waiter, teacher, farmhand, lab technician or construction worker, He could run a housecleaning service or repair automobiles.
In other words if he were to come today he could very well do what you do. He could very well live in your apartment or house, hold down your job, have your education and life prospects, and live within your family, surroundings, and time, none of this would be the least hindrance to the eternal kind of life that was by his nature and becomes available to us through him. Our human life, it turns out, is not destroyed by God's life but is fulfilled in it and it alone." end quote
What a powerful, liberating, biblical truth...God is at work in the most ordinary aspects of life. Right where we are at we have the ability to serve Christ and his kingdom. Simply put, there is no such thing as a secular job for a follower of Jesus Christ. What might appear to be a mundane job is an opportunity serve Christ and his kingdom. Our job, our home, our daily life is where Christ is at work. God redeems even the most ordinary moments of life and has the power to use them to display his glory. Of course there is a "catch". We have to seek first the kingdom of God...we have to be looking, observing, watching and engaging in what God is doing. I have to be honest with myself, what am I really seeking first? What is it that I want most in life? Since God is at work in the ordinary stuff of our lives every moment is filled with meaning and significance.