Making the Bed: Mundane
If you were to sit down and make a list of the menial tasks that you perform in an average day or week, would you be astounded to find that even the greatest adventurers among us would still scribble the same things down on their list as you and me? Our lives’ unwritten (and often unthought about, as they are simply habits by now) To Do lists consist of mundane things like securing food, consuming food, cleaning up after preparing food, getting rid of waste, sleeping, cleaning our bodies, covering our bodies, and moving from one place to another, just to name a few. We expend extensive amounts of energy just to survive!
In Tish Warren Harrison’s book Liturgy of the Ordinary, time and time again, she comes back to this concept of repetition and routine (it’s in the very title!), and she spends the book helping us sanctify these items on those To Do lists. “It is in the repetitive and the mundane that I begin to learn to love, to listen, to pay attention to God, and to those around me” (36). Quite honestly, we don’t do this naturally. We often mumble and grumble our way through the tasks that take up so much of our time, feeling like they are something of a waste of time, in fact!
Remember that Jesus had the same basic items on his To Do lists as we do during each day of His earthly existence as well. God created and designed us to spend time on these types of activities, so shouldn’t they certainly have inherent value? And yet, we just don’t see it sometimes. We see them as bothersome things we have to get through to get to the “real” part of our day … the part that really matters.
Comparing these types of ordinary tasks to items on our spiritual habits list may help this make more sense. We may not evangelize to 400 unreached people each day, but we certainly need to ask for forgiveness every day. We will not attend a spiritual convention every weekend of our lives, but we do bow our heads in prayer before most every meal. “The kind of spiritual life and disciplines needed to sustain the Christian life are quiet, repetitive, and ordinary … it’s in the dailiness of the Christian faith - the making the bed, the doing the dishes, the praying for our enemies, the reading the Bible, the quiet, the small - that God’s transformation takes root and grows” (36).
See if you can embrace what people might perceive as mundane in your day and find ways to see and feel the significance of learning the faithfulness in the places and spaces where God created you to spend part of your time. Fold your laundry to the best of your ability. Make those meals for your family with a positive attitude. Balance that checkbook with a heart of gratitude. Walk your dog with joy in your step. In all these things - and more - you are practicing aligning your attitude with God’s heart. That’s a marvelous responsibility!