Monday, March 06, 2006

Mundane

Making the Mundane Meaningful
Transcript, The Christian Working Woman

Monday, March 6, 2006

If my everyday activities were chronicled for a week or month or year, it would not be a best-seller! I doubt anyone but my mother would want to read it, and I'm not sure about her. Why? Because my life is very mundane.

You may be thinking, "Mundane? But you have a radio program and you write books and you travel a lot." True, but those activities are mostly made up of mundaneness. Sure, there are some moments that have a flare and excitement to them, but most of the time I'm involved with looking at the screen of my PC and hoping for a flash of inspiration, searching my thesaurus for the right word, stopping at the store for bread, remembering to take out the trash, watering my plants before they die, writing checks–MUNDANE!

I have dreams occasionally of being a princess and having someone to do all the mundane things for me. But it's just a dream; my life–and undoubtedly yours too–will always have a large component of mundane activities.

But one of the advantages we have as Christians, one of the great things about serving Christ is that even mundane, everyday things can have significance. Colossians 3:17 says:

"Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

Whatever means everything. I know a godly woman from Houston , who has walked with the Lord for many years. Her husband once told me, "She's always the last one to leave the church because she gets stuck cleaning up the kitchen, sweeping the floors, all the dirty work." Her quiet response was, "I do it for Jesus, so what difference does it make if I'm sweeping the floor."

Cleaning a kitchen was an eternally significant activity for this dear woman, because in her heart she did it to bring glory to the Lord Jesus. Every mundane thing you and I do can have eternal significance if our heart attitude is right. That's all it takes–the right attitude.

What are the mundane things you have to do today? It's likely there are many of them. To turn them into something significant, just make sure in your heart you're doing them for Jesus. While running errands, making coffee at work, returning phone calls, or shopping for groceries, do it with a joyful and light heart; do it willingly; do it as though Jesus were right there beside you, watching how you do it. (By the way, He is, you know.) By doing those things for Jesus, the mundane becomes meaningful.

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