In praise of the ordinary
It was Sunday morning. Parked three pews back in yet another church service, I held my head in my hands, probably leading some to think I was praying, which I was not. My shoulders were hunched over by despair, which draped around me like a damp blanket, but I couldn’t think why. I had committed no great sin, and even doubt, that familiar kill-joy foe that often stalks me during Christian gatherings that are high on certainty, was not the source of my struggle.
The smiling greeters had been warm and welcoming enough; the worship band was skilful and enthusiastic without resorting to cheerleading or insisting we all burble with ecstasy. So why the niggle that buzzed around my brain like a pesky mosquito? When at last we passed the post of the final amen, I was left with a feeling of breathless claustrophobia. Why?
Reflecting later, I decided that things had gone seriously wrong during the preaching. The speaker said nothing that was theologically controversial, and I had no qualms about his sincerity. But hope had drained from me as he had painted the Christian life as endlessly epic. He had urged the congregation to expect more of God’s activity in their everyday lives, to become full-time ‘conduits of power’. At first glance, there was nothing much wrong with that.
But I was wearied by the suggestion that every day has to sparkle with significance, and be punctuated with messages from God and miraculous happenings. Life, including life for the Christian, includes plenty of dull days that can be filed away under the heading of ‘Not much happened’. I’m not suggested that God is distant or uninvolved; but he isn’t a bottled genie who fixes every scrape or a chatterer who endlessly blethers in our ear about trivia. And if healing miracles are as freely available as the preacher suggested, then we should cancel a few services and head for the nearest cancer ward. Much as I’d like to live every day in the spiritual equivalent of a five-star resort, there are seasons when we all feel like we’re languishing in the bleak landscape of a simmering wilderness. Mother Teresa, who gave of herself so heroically in serving the poor and the dying in Calcutta, admitted that for thirty years she had sensed little of the presence of God. Writing to her friend, Michael van der Peet, she confessed, ‘The silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear’. Her days were heroic, but not epic.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in epic days. I became a Christian partly because of a miraculous healing, and I am in ministry because a guest speaker prophesied over me - and God told him my first and last name, which is anything but vague. I drove my car off the side of a cliff once and my screaming turned to laughter when the car was somehow lifted back onto the road by an invisible hand. Don’t think that I’m trying to handcuff God or render him impotent, or worse still tag him as disinterested. It’s just that I also know that there are days, weeks, and sometimes even decades where not much happens.
And then I realised that the preacher was projecting his life experience onto the congregation - he was traveling around to conferences, prayer gatherings and summit meetings with other leaders. His vocabulary was shaped by the context in which he does life. And so he thundered that we should rise up and shift the atmosphere in the nation - we were going to break through, if we secured our inheritance, and embraced our prophetic destiny. Eh? What does all that mean on a Monday morning to the man who makes widgets in a factory, or cleans the toilets in a motorway service stop?
And those who do live in the world of Christian events don’t live endlessly thrilled. This morning, I didn’t wake up, do a triple backflip through the air, catching my tambourine as I flew, landing in my cowboy boots with a cry of ‘Hallelujah’. Jesus has washed my sins away, but I still have to clean the car, get stuck on the M25, cough when I have a cold, and get nervous when the credit card bill arrives.
So is God still in the miracle working business? Absolutely. But one of the greatest miracles of all is to see followers of Jesus, doing ordinary and sometimes dishwater-dull tasks with excellence and faithfulness. The Irish novelist Colum McCann is right: it takes courage to live the ordinary life.