Grace Day #30: The Holy Ordinary
“And 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.” — Colossians 3:17 (NIV)
The Journey
I stood in the middle of my kitchen on a Tuesday morning, staring at a sink full of grey, lukewarm dishwater. A mountain of oatmeal-crusted bowls sat on the counter. The baby was crying in the other room. The dog was barking at the mailman.
I felt a sudden, crushing wave of disappointment.
Just three days earlier, I had been at a women’s retreat in the mountains. We had worshipped for hours. I had wept at the altar. I had felt the presence of God so thick in the room that I could almost touch it. I had promised God, “I will change the world for You! I will do great things!”
And now? I was scrubbing a pot. Again.
It felt like a spiritual hangover. The gap between the “glory” of the retreat and the “grind” of my actual life felt like a canyon I couldn’t cross. I thought, Is this it? Is this the abundant life Jesus promised? Wiping counters and paying bills until I die?
I felt like my real life was an obstacle to my spiritual life. If only I didn’t have to work this job, or clean this house, then I could really pray. then I could really be holy.
Later that afternoon, while the baby napped, I sat down with a cup of coffee and a book a friend had recommended—a classic by a 17th-century monk named Brother Lawrence. He was a man who spent his life in a monastery, but not in the sanctuary. He worked in the kitchen.
I read a line that stopped me cold: “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”
I looked up at my own messy kitchen. Brother Lawrence didn’t find God in spite of the dishes; he found God in the dishes.
I realized I had bought into a lie—the lie that God only lives in the “spiritual” activities (church, Bible study, missions) and is absent from the “secular” ones (laundry, emails, traffic). I was waiting for the next mountaintop to worship, leaving the valley of my daily life godless.
I stood up and walked back to the sink. The water was cold. The pot was still greasy. But this time, I changed my posture.
“Lord,” I whispered, picking up the sponge. “I am not just cleaning a pot. I am serving my family. I am creating order out of chaos, just like You did in Genesis. This sink is my altar. This sponge is my offering.”
As I scrubbed, I didn’t feel a bolt of lightning. But I felt a quiet, steady warmth enter the room. The resentment faded. The mundane task became a moment of communion.
When I went to work the next day, I tried it again. I opened a spreadsheet—usually the most boring part of my week. “Lord,” I prayed, “Let this work be excellent, because I do it for You. Let me bring peace to this data.”
Suddenly, the cubicle didn’t feel like a prison; it felt like a parish.
I learned that there is no such thing as “secular” work for a believer. Everything is sacred if it is offered to Him. I don’t need to be a missionary in Africa to be close to God; I just need to be a missionary in my own kitchen. The Holy Spirit fits just as well in a traffic jam as He does in a cathedral.
Heart of the Matter
We often live fractured lives. We have our “God compartment” (Sunday morning, prayer time) and our “Life compartment” (work, chores, hobbies). We struggle because we spend 90% of our time in the “Life compartment,” feeling like we are distant from God.
But the Incarnation—Jesus becoming human—smashed that divide. Jesus spent 30 years being a carpenter before He spent 3 years as a rabbi. He knows the holiness of a saw, a hammer, and a dusty road.
You do not need to escape your ordinary life to find God. He is hidden in the ordinary. As Tish Harrison Warren writes, “God is the God of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.” When we consecrate our daily tasks—when we change diapers, write code, or mow the lawn “as unto the Lord”—we turn the secular into the sacred. We turn our entire day into a continuous act of worship.
Faith in Action
Choose one mundane activity you do every single day that you usually do on “autopilot” (e.g., brewing coffee, brushing your teeth, starting your car).
Turn that activity into a “Marker.”
- When you push the button on the coffee maker: Say, “Lord, fill me with Your Spirit as this cup fills.”
- When you turn the key in your car: Say, “Lord, drive with me. My commute is Your sanctuary.”
Do this every day for a week until the habit is formed.
Prayer for the Day
Lord of the Everyday, thank You that You are not just the God of the mountaintop, but the God of the kitchen sink, the cubicle, and the grocery aisle. Forgive me for calling my daily life “boring” when You call it a place of worship. Help me to see the holy in the ordinary. Teach me to offer my small tasks to You as a living sacrifice. I invite You into the minute-by-minute details of my day. Amen.
Grace Note
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” — C.S. Lewis