For those of you who checked my blog this weekend, you know that I spoke on Saturday (if not, see the post below this one). It went great, I had a great time, and others were greatly blessed (from what I have been told). Notice I keep using the word "great"...because, I sit here on Monday morning out of the "spotlight" and back to the "ordinary". It is very easy, in the flesh, to see what I did on Saturday as the good thing, the great thing, the thing that has meaning and purpose and changes lives and to see what I am doing today as what I MUST do...but not really being all that great. There will not be many hugs of appreciation or words of encouragement, there will probably be no "good jobs" and "the Lord really used you" coming from the lips of my children. I will be tempted to believe the lie that greatness comes from doing great things.
It's an easy lie to believe. I have read countless stories of missionaries and pastors and women of God who have done great things for the cause of Christ...left dear family only to lose their own family, or their own life, on the mission field, imprisoned for the cause of Christ, preached amazing sermons in the midst of great persecution...men and women who's words and actions leave me amazed and wondering if God will ever choose to use me in a fraction of the way He used them.
Here is what I am tempted to forget: Greatness is the result of God taking "ordinary" lives and "ordinary" things and doing extraordinary things to display HIS glory so that HE might be seen as great! God asks for faithfulness...not "greatness". Each moment lived in the "ordinary"...and I say that in quotation marks because ordinary by no means equals boring, meaningless or without purpose...the calling of a wife and mommy is a high, beautiful calling...but it is usually lived out in the "trenches" of life and not on the mountaintops, right?!...each "ordinary" moment is an opportunity to live for the glory of God. "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God", 1 Corinthians 10:31 says. What could be more ordinary than eating and drinking?!
You see, these men and women who I mentioned above...never aspired to "greatness"...they aspired to knowing God, loving Him with all their hearts, and faithfully and passionately obeying His call for their lives. They did not aspire to greatness...they aspired to obedience and God took their faithfulness with "little" and made them faithful over "much". God took their "ordinary" actions and used them to make Himself be seen as great through their lives!
My husband gave the illustration to me of a baseball player who hits a grand slam and wins the game. Everyone remembers that player and the act that he accomplished...but it's so easy to forget that what he did was only made possible by the 3 men who came up to bat before him and made a hit that put them on the bases!
Or, as we listened to a couple from our church share with us over lunch yesterday how God brought them from Africa to Canada, we were amazed by all the "ordinary" encounters (a garage sale, a meal brought over, a wait in an airport) that led to God being seen as great and providing in AMAZING ways through "ordinary" people and things.
Some people may have walked away remembering what I shared on Saturday...but the only way I was even able to share was the result of a few ladies and their hard work setting up the room the night before, getting there early the day of, and staying hours past the breakfast to clean up. "Ordinary" work.
I just got done reading a book by a missionary gal who lives in Mexico. The title of Lila Joy Quezada's book says it all "Diving Off the Pedestal". Being in the "spotlight" can be a very dangerous place to be, not just because others elevate us to a place we do not belong, but because we can easily feel like that is where greatness happens. Dive off that pedestal...or even the thought of a pedestal....with me and let's swim in the waters of God's mercy and grace as we seek to live our "ordinary" lives to the glory of our extraordinary God!
"If two angels were to receive at the same moment a commission from God, one to go down and rule earth's grandest empire, the other to go and sweep the streets of it's meanest village; it would be a matter of entire indifference to each which service fell to his lot: the post of ruler or the post of scavenger; for the joy of the angels lies only in obedience to God's will." John Newton
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