there have been many different seasons in my life. adventurous ones. fast ones. slow ones. painful ones. happy ones. contemplative ones. and a mixture of all of them. i have enjoyed some of these seasons and some of them i have dreaded.
for the better part of this year i spent a couple hours a week doing pretty menial tasks as part of where i was living. cleaning toilets i never peed in. picking up trash from those who left it behind. hand washing dishes i totally did use.
but something in me was excited as i started the journey.
as i started this season my thoughts kept being drawn back to Brother Lawrence and “practicing the presence”. what i always remembered about this monk was his dedication to inviting God into each moment whether it was praying and worship or washing pots and pans. i knew that God wanted to meet me here, here in the toilets and trash and dishes. He wanted to show me how He was present in EVERYTHING.
that may seem silly…being excited about cleaning bathrooms. maybe excited is a strong word but i KNEW that God was going to show up and be with me in these jobs so many hated to do. perhaps it is because i anticipated Him showing up, or maybe for other reasons, but i never seemed to dread the work. there was always a sweet grace on it. how i went about it looked different from week to week. sometimes i was listening to worship music or perhaps a podcast or maybe some pop culture music. it didn’t matter cause God was there in the mundane the same way He is in the grandiose.
i don’t know about you but i want to live a life that matters. i want to live a life where when i get to the end, not only is the world around me a better place but so are the people. that i didn’t leave anything on the “field.” i don’t know if we can actually do that if we don’t learn to meet God in the small things that so many disregard.
where is it that you don’t think to invite God? where you think you have to go it alone? where is it that you find yourself getting frustrated and bored? invite Him into that place!
after nearly a complete 33 years of being single, i regret to say that it is just now i have figured out what it means that He is our constant companion. and i am sure i still have much more yet to learn, but there is something sweet in not only inviting God into the exciting and good but into the mundane moments of our life. into the painful moments of our life.
i think so many of us just want life to always be rosey and nice but that just won’t happen. but what if you could experience joy in any situation? what if you could show up to the event you didn’t want to with Jesus instead of going solo? what if inviting Him to really be present with us all the time changed things?
it does. it changes waiting. it changes pain. it changes chores. it changes how i view sin. it changes how i view relationships. Immanuel, God with us, changes everything!
so where are you going to invite Him in?