thank you, god, for the routine...

i have to be honest - i sort of assumed that most of my classes in seminary were going to be a lot theological jibber-jabber that would leave me (after seminary) trying to figure out how to apply what i learned to everyday life. not that this is a bad thing. i think it is important to believe in a triune god and a christ who is fully god and fully man, for instance, even though it is difficult to figure out how all that works and the implications for our lives.

however, since i have arrived here, i have realized that i could not have been more wrong! the professors here at pittsburgh have a special way of making everything very practical - even the most theological things. i will give you an example from today's spiritual formation class (or as we affectionately refer to it - spifo) with dr. barnes. this particular lecture was about several things (a little augustine, justice and compassion spirituality, etc.), but one of these things was spirituality in everyday, ordinary life. i hope this will bless your soul as it did mine! by the way, this is dr. barnes' stuff - not my own. i am not this clever, and i do not wish to be accused of plagiarism! also, i will certainly not articulate it as well as he did, but i hope you get the point. so here it is:

apparently if you add up the instances that are talked about in the gospels, it only adds up to a year worth of days. those of you who are on your toes will be asking, "i thought jesus' ministry was 3 years." good point. so what was he doing the rest of that time? as dr. barnes put it: "this means that 2 out of every 3 days jesus looked at the disciples at the end of day and said, 'well, don't write down anything from today... nothing significant happened.' it was just a routine day." it was a laundry day possibly... or another day running around town... or working... or whatever you do on a normal day.

but, no matter how ordinary, these are nonetheless significant days because god loves routine. think about it. everything in creation hinges on the routine. electrons moving in circles around a nucleus. planets moving around the sun. seasons come and go and come again. the sun comes up and goes down and then comes up again. everything in creation is in a constant routine, and we would be in serious trouble if any of these things got out of wack. but through this routine, all of creation is singing doxology to god because, through this routine, everything in creation is doing what it was created to do. praise god from whom all blessings flow! the sun comes up every morning, not necessarily because of natural order, but because god instructs it to.

those of you who have played with little kids recently know the truth of routine being a god created thing. if you start a game with a kid, what is the first thing they say after you stop (say you are swinging them in circles)? that's right... do it again! do it again! do it again! soon you realize that they are going to keep this up a lot longer than you can. why do they do this? simply put, they love routine because they were created in the image of a god who loves routine.

the problem for us is that we are real good with our spirituality during times of crisis or when things are going really well. but not everything is valley and mountaintop experiences. what about the plains in between which take up the majority of our lives... the days when we are waking up and going to school or to work and picking up the kids from school and cooking dinner and doing laundry and cleaning the house and cutting the yard and going to meetings and practices and ______ (you can fill in the blank). the real challenge of spirituality for us is to pay attention to the things happening in our routine - this is the task of spirituality! as dr. barnes said, "you have to see the mystery beneath the ordinary." it is all about the subtext. if we got to go back in time and we met jesus, chances are that we would see him on an "ordinary" day... a day when he was not healing or casting out demons but going about his daily routine (if there was such a thing!). but was there truly anything "ordinary" about anything jesus did? certainly on the day he was crucified, people walked by and saw something that was ordinary. unfortunately, everyday people were hung on crosses. surely, people saw him that day, and it was just part of their routine. but christ was at work in that ordinary event to make it extraordinary!

too often we don't see the holiness of routine. i know that i don't. i even get upset at it! it is boring. i want constant change to keep me entertained. but this is why it is so important for us to live in community. the people around us can see the holiness in our routine. they know the subtext. they know the mystery beneath our ordinary lives. we certainly can't take our beating heart for granted when there are those around us who know what a blessing a healthy heart is. we certainly can't get sick of tending to our children when there are those around us who desparately want the frustration of tending to children but can't get pregnant.

karl barth stated that all sin begins with a lack of gratitude. how can there be room for sin when we are grateful? may we be grateful for our "ordinary" routines. may we look for the subtext and find the holiness in everything we do. may we find christ making the ordinary extraordinary.

cheers,
jw

by the way, the theology of the triune god is extremely important in everyday life. check out james torrance's worship, community, and the triune god of grace. just another great, practical lesson taught to us here at pts!