Chapter 1 - Waking: Reflection

Waking: Reflection

“No job is too big; no pup is too small.”  If you recognize that motto, perhaps you have also put together a Paw Patrol birthday party for one of your children at some point in your life!  I remember our son Matt’s fourth birthday party vividly because I really went overboard on this particular celebration.  If you ask my family, this might actually be a theme of mine: going overboard on birthdays is kind of my thing.  But seriously, check out these homemade cupcakes….fondant at its funnest! (“funnest” is a British nonstandard superlative of fun, just to ease any grammar police out there, by the way):

Cousin Nicolas enjoying his treat

The games were pretty amazing too for this July birthday, if I do say so myself.  I came up with a game to go along with each pup: Zuma’s Water Balloon Spoon Race, Marshall’s Water Relay, Chase’s Cold Potato, Rocky’s Over Under Game, Skye’s Frozen Shirts, and Rubble’s “Pinaqua” (a “pinata full of water, just to give a little explanation there).  

Now you may think I’m prattling on because I’m a birthday nerd and I have a hopefully captive audience, and you would be 100% right in that classification.  I absolutely love to reminisce and talk about my kids’ birthday celebrations!  However, come back to my opening line for a moment, and then read this statement: “There is no task too small or too routine to reflect God’s glory and worth” (22).  (I really do have a point to all my rambling… a connection, if you will!)

How many hours did I spend creating those detailed little fondant pup faces?  I didn’t keep track, of course, but I find that the concept of planning a celebration can be a microcosm of demonstrating your love for that person.  Did I enjoy every second of plucking all the grapes off their stems for my bowl of “Everest’s Grapes” or cutting up all that watermelon for “Skye’s Watermelon” to have as refreshments at the party?  (Yes, each pup offered us a fruit that matched his or her color to enjoy during the games…)  I did not necessarily delight in each one of those plucks or slices, but I found that anticipating my family and our guests eating them enabled me to smile while I got the fruit ready!

Don’t we do the same thing to demonstrate our love for God in the care we take with scrubbing a pan in the sink or applying stain remover to those baseball pants?  Do we roam the aisles at our local grocery store trying to find the right ingredient for that new recipe we want to try for our family with eagerness in our hearts?  Every single thing that we do, whether it seems mundane or glorious, can demonstrate our heart’s position in looking toward God and letting His light shine on us and then reflect off us.

Now I’ll openly admit that I am (intentionally) being overly optimistic about some of these tasks; surely you, like I, can list tasks that seem very difficult to do with a heart pulsating with enthusiasm and don’t seem to be radiating any sort of spirituality - Cleaning toilets? Washing floors? Dusting behind the fridge?  Maybe for you, it’s folding laundry.  These seemingly never ending tasks can bring with them discouragement (Really?  I am spending my time doing this AGAIN!?) or disgust (I did NOT know that ended up behind the fridge… gag, gag…)  But try to change your point of view and think not so much about the actual task but think instead of your attitude while doing it.

As Liturgy of the Ordinary discusses, “Because of the incarnation and those long, unrecorded years of Jesus’ life, our small, normal lives matter.   If Christ was a carpenter, all of us who are in Christ find that our work is sanctified and made holy.  If Christ spent time in obscurity, then there is infinite worth found in obscurity.  If Christ spent most of his life in quotidian ways, then all of life is brought under his lordship” (22).

What a fantastic word - quotidian!  But what does it mean?!  I’ll look it up for you (because I’ll admit that I didn’t know either): Perhaps this will inspire you: “of or occurring every day; daily”.  How marvelous that such a spectacular word means something so, well, so ordinary.  And let that be a reminder to us in those moments of our regular rhythms and our repetitive to do lists including making meals, vacuuming carpets, or picking up toys: Jesus too was entangled in the “normalness” of the human existence.  And that’s part of the gift of the incarnation: to know that the culmination of all these moments of everyday life adds up to meaning and significance!

  Now maybe you’d like to see the results of my experimenting with candy melts for a recent Wings of Fire birthday cake…