Mundane Holy /// Africa

                      . 

 

     I realized that if Africa had worked out, this wouldn’t have happened. I would have missed this. I would have missed the picture of mundane holy.

     Yeah, my heart was set on Africa, and still is, but now was not the time. Later. 

     God said “Wait. Be content with my mission for you here.”

     So I waited, confused and upset, wandering. I had to go into that office and force the words out of my mouth. “Not this year. That mission to Africa, apparently it’s not God’s timing for that. I want it to be though.”  

     Why couldn’t I just get on that plane? It was only two weeks anyway, right? Two weeks of going to serve. I wanted to hold children, wash clothes, and minister closer to the equator than I’ve ever been before. What was God trying to teach me by keeping me home?

     I was angry, so I traveled as far away as I could…only a state away. And I served there. 

But then my eyes began to open. Slowly. 

     And I saw life. 

     Before my eyes was the holiness that comes through simply living for Christ in the smallest, seemingly unimportant things. As I carried groceries, changed diapers, washed dishes, and sorted load after load of laundry, I saw the mundane holy. 

     Washing toilets and cooking meals, holy work. Being the listening ears for a sibling who has had their heart broken….holy work. Singing a bedtime hymn to sleepy-eyed little girls…holy work. Coming alongside and saying ‘let me bear some of your pain.’…holy work.

     Doing life for Christ is holy work. 

     Living life in faith, as a servant, is to partake in mundane, everyday holiness. 

     My eyes opened wider and I saw why it wasn’t time for me to work under the Ugandan sun. I needed to see the holiness in life lived as a Child of God. I needed to see that everything done in faith as is holy work.

     Finally, my soul understands, and I can say without any bitterness “Your will, your timing be done, Lord. Africa can wait."

     So I sing a little louder, love a little harder, and set out to wash feet. Living life, each breath drawing in the holy.