Ecclesiastes 3:12-13: Ordinary, But Not Typical

I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live--that each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. - Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

Be careful what you exalt. Believers showcase missionaries and pastors and full-time ministry workers as examples for others to imitate. I have known many truly godly men and women in these professions, whose humility and obedience to the call of God on their lives has challenged my faith. I have also known many truly godly men and women who have slugged it out through the day-to-day struggle of living the ordinary life of a Christ follower at work, church, home and neighborhood, and they stretch me.

So I cringe when the "best" growth path offered for Christian life is full-time ministry and anything else is somehow less. When has the church highlighted (apart from stay-at-home motherhood) the well-lived, ordinary life of the the insurance broker, the computer programmer, the secretary and the sanitation engineer as the exemplary Christian life-on par with pastor-ing or missionary-ing?

I am convinced that I am called to the ordinary life, but not the typical life. I'm married, own a house, have three kids, go to work each day and own a house. Not everyone's life, but not unusual. I am called to love my wife well, raise my kids to meet God and love others, excel at the work I'm given, enjoy the provision of God and live generously towards everyone God brings into my path. This isn't plan B for my life-what someone with a seminary degree does when they don't happen to make it into full-time ministry. I am convinced that this is God's plan A for me-no less blessed.

Listen to Paul's words the members of the church in Thessaloniki:

Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. - 1 Thessalonians 4:10b-12

No call here for the revolutionary life. Rather the ordinary quiet life-industrious, respectable, excellent. Not typical. Not mediocre. Not the anxious and anger lives of their neighbors, but rather full of love and hopeful.

So what does it look like when the ordinary people show up? The same stuff happens, the same laughter erupts and tears flow, but the grace of God accompanies the people of God into each and changes its significance and thereby glorifies God.

Luke 8:15: Perseverance Is Patience Prolonged

But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop. - Luke 8:15

Paul says that "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character and character, hope." (Romans 5:3-4). I have wondered whether being annoyed counts as "suffering" in this context. Because I am often annoyed. :-) It doesn't take a coliseum full of hungry lions or midnight raids and secret trials. A slow-moving buffet line or a shopping cart angled across the aisle of a grocery store will do it easily and with a lot less...fuss. l often mentally catalog ways that people could optimize their handling of a tedious situation to make it easier for other people. I am easily annoyed and, therefore, I am on the fast track to hope and saint-hood, right?

What I have found instead is that fostering annoyance or impatience leads me to be a more irritable and impatient person. And when I reflect on what I am saying (silently or out loud) and thinking (loudly) about other people in these circumstances, I find I am not a person whom I can admire.

So I have begun to do four things over the past few months:

1. Deliberately choose slower options, such as slower lanes of traffic or longer check-out lines. I call this the "discipline of the longest line". It is a means of fighting my me-first, critique-filled attitude and a means of testing where I am in this process.
2. Keep a tally of the number of times that I am impatient with people in these types of situations, 
3. Talk with God each time to discuss why I felt so entitled and in a hurry and 
4. Discuss this process with some that I trust. 

Why? Because I don't like the type of person I am when I am impatient. Because I am chronically in a hurry even when I have plenty of time. Because my wife and good friends see it also.

It's early days, so nothing is settled. I have gone from a high of about 18 or 19 incidents in a week to a record low of 4 this past week. Thanks to God's work through this, I am doing better in traffic and at stores, but I have found new areas. I didn't even know how irritable I am in buffet lines (12 "incidents" in one evening!) or airport security. Each time is a prompt to reset myself before God:

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

I hope that these seasons of patience ("perseverance") in the little things produces the harvest Jesus talked about. As farmers know, no harvest ever came without perseverance and perseverance consists of day-after-day patience in the same direction as God does his life-changing work.

But with character, there is hope. Hope that I can actually be different. Hope that I can actually be the person that Christ imagines in me.

Ephesians 3:17b-19: Rooted and Established

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. - Ephesians 3:17b-19

Summer is the testing time for our garden. The heat in our town beats down and we can see which plants and trees are established. That is, they have developed a reliable connection to the water and nutrients that are available in the soil. Or not. That connection allows it to stand the test of the 20+ days over 100 degrees in July.

When a seed is first introduced into the ground, it has a certain amount of life within it. Enough life to sprout up towards the sun. Enough life to dig down into the soil. But that life is limited and if that first growth does not become rooted and established, it will fail. It must make a connection with the sustenance in the environment. If not, it will die. No long term prospects.

Jesus uses a similar idea in his parable of the farmer who scattered his seed. He explains that "The farmer sows the word." (Mark 4:14) God's word has life in it. It has the necessary elements to initiate life. It has the necessary DNA to form godliness within us. But it must be rooted and established in order to grow. Otherwise it has no long term prospects.

Paul expands on this: he prays that all the folks in the church, who are "rooted and established in love" get an idea of the full richness of soil into which God has planted this new life. God hasn't left us in the flinty, rock-filled, nutrient-deficient soil. No, he has planted this life of ours in the wide-open, unimaginably rich and fulfilling soil of his love.

If we are feeling nutrient-deprived and water-stressed, perhaps our roots are stretching for sustenance in the wrong directions.

Mark 4:30-32: Environments Where Others Can Thrive

Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.” - Mark 4:30-32

When you walk into most churches on Sunday morning, you don't realize it, but the air is being processed by machinery under the control of computer software. Likewise, the light is often controlled by a sophisticated controller that allows pre-programmed settings to set the mood and highlight specific points of interest within the sanctuary. A mixer board manages and massages the sound produced by the instruments to blend together for a pleasing effect. Working together, these create an environment meant to complement the message and help the people be prepared to receive it. We've probably all noticed when it wasn't working: ice-box air, silenced instruments or voices, empty spotlights.

What does it look like when the kingdom of God is present at work? At home? In a church? Jesus points to it when he mentions that the mustard seed grows to a full-sized tree "with such big branches that birds can perch in its shade." The tree creates a new environment which allows the birds can now escape the heat of the day and rest. They can build nests, escape predators and raise their young. In Biblical terms, where the kingdom of God is made manifest, there is peace, or shalom or (to my thinking) an environment where others can thrive.

To extend the parable a bit further, some plants do not create this kind of environment. Some plants poison the ground underneath their canopy so that no other plants can grow there-a trait known as allelopathy. Some plants produce spines that limit which kinds of animals can climb or land on the branches.

What does it look like when other kingdoms reign instead of the kingdom of God? Elimination of the competition, suppression of those within the reach of our influence, withdrawal of help and support, to name a few, and sucking up resources for self.

The kingdom of God extends to wherever its citizens are active. What would it look like if the kingdom of God showed up in your office? In your home? In your church? In your neighborhood? In your country? You and I are there, so there is some provision-however small-has been made by God for the kingdom to establish a foothold in all of those places. We all may have ideas about what the kingdom of God should look like, but Jesus' point in this parable is that, as his representatives, we create an environment where others can thrive, the kingdom of God is gaining a foothold.

It will always imperfect in this age, because the world is not perfect and neither are we. Entropy reigns and selfishness corrupts. Only in Christ and his kingdom is there hope for anything else.

We are all called in ordinary ways to use the grace given us to provide that canopy under which others can thrive. This is me as a manager, a parent, a spouse, a neighbor and a part of my church. Check yourself-before looking for excuses: Are the people around you trending towards wholeness? Are you being honest with yourself about the influence you are actually having on them? You been given the grace to make a difference?