What do I mean by the Sacred Mundane?
The sacred mundane is the call to live a life in which every single facet is supernaturally infused with eternal significance. As William Paul Young writes,
“If anything matters, everything matters.”
It is living with a real, conscious awareness that every breath of our life is important, indeed eternally important. While we might agree with this on a cerebral level, it is quite another matter to live this way. Why? Because the mundane rules our lives, and the Evil One has managed to successfully deceive us into thinking that mundane matters are separate from our spiritual life.
I believe this is the most subtle and dangerous lie we are tempted to believe. We are daily tempted, subconsiously, to believe it doesn’t really matter, and to live the majority of our lives–the mundane–in one manner, while attempting to progress in our Christian life through other means. In the words of Paul David Tripp,
“If God doesn’t rule your mundane, He doesn’t rule your life. Because the mundane is where you live.”
I say that life is infused with eternal significance because we are not the ones who give our life significance. Material objects and a vast majority of actions and decisions have no moral value.
It is the altar which sanctifies the gift.
Sacred living is nothing more than living a life which is consecrated, or set apart, wholly to Him who alone is Sacred: The Triune God. A life which has been given over to God (i.e. born again) has been consecrated to Christ and is therefore sacred and holy.
It isn’t a matter of feeling, but rather a matter of fact.
When we consciously decide to embrace sacred living, we are merely acknowledging and embracing what already is. We are acting in the appropriate manner. And nothing, absolutely nothing, is more satisfying and rewarding than doing that which you were created to do. Mundane takes on immeasurable value and limitless potential. Trials are transformed from obstacles to opportunities.
Life teems with meaning.
That’s the sacred mundane.
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Repost from the archives, January 2009.