Sacred Mundane: The Blog

I walked in just now dripping wet to get a drink. I don’t even want to dry off, the water feels so good, cool beads down my neck, my back, puddles at my feet. Now, I sip ice water and at the simple joy of thirst quenched. I can feel the water hydrating my cells almost immediately.

Refreshing can happen so fast. From scorched to soaked, in an instant. Such a picture of what’s happening inside:

A return to the well.

I’d been swimming around, still, in Psalm 63. Still struck by the imagery, the thirsting and longing, then the joy and deep satisfaction. I knew something had been off. Prayer felt forced, rote, tasks joyless, writing laborious, even my sacred mundane seemed stagnant, uneventful. All the needs around me, all those leaning into me, all the straws sucking me dry, I started to resent them.

We can return to the well in an instant, but how do we drink? How? Too often I  swing between “going hard for God” mode and then “rest and do what I want” mode. Rest is good, but selfishness leaves us emptier than ever. “Me first” will suck us drier than a thousand straws.

How do we drink?

I sat, out, in the sun, while the kids ran off to play. Something kept me from opening the laptop again. Although there are speaking notes to finish and preparations to be made, something urged me back to The Heavenly Man. I opened to my place, and could barely believe what I read:

“Because I’d been operating in my own strength for months, I was physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted. My spiritual eyesight had grown dim and my hearing dull. Pride has sprung up in my heart like a choking weed. Instead of obeying God’s voice, I reasoned with human logic and based my decisions on my own wisdom. …

… Working for God had taken the place of loving God. … I was still getting up every morning at five o’clock and praying, and I was still reading my Bible every day, but I was doing these things out of obligation and habit, and not from a willing heart flowing from my relationship with Jesus. (184)

My eyes widened. I literally could have written those exact words myself. There is nothing like reading your own confession laid out by another honest, humble soul who’s brave enough to go first. It’s a gift to others when we confess our sin one to another, even through the pages of a book. Through it, we’re healed.

That was it. How to drink: It sounds strange, but you have to swallow.

Sure, for many of us, we never go to the well. We wander around looking for satisfaction in a thousand other places, never quite quenching our soul’s thirst because we never go to the Source.

But then, some of us, we go to the well. But we’re always going to there, subconsciously, for someone else. We fill our buckets and maybe even our mouths, and we lug those impossibly heavy water-cans all the way home so we can quench the thirst of someone else. We, like Mama birds, empty even our own mouth’s water into the tiny upturned souls of our children.

And then, the next day, we do it again. Endless trips to the well, lugging buckets of water back for the others.

And we forget to drink.

We forget to swallow. We forget to pause and lift the bucket to our own souls and drink, long and deep, as much as we can, until we can drink no more.

We don’t have to worry that there won’t be enough to bring home.

The well never runs dry. 

But if we never drink, we’ll die. Spiritually we cannot keep only fetching water for other souls.

We must stop … repent …

and drink.

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. (Is. 55:1)

{Thank you for reading.}

I’m sorry. Again. I feel like this Spring has been a string of apologies for once again neglecting this poor blog space. We’re coming up on 9 years of consistently writing in this space, and it’s never been this hit-and-miss. *sigh* That isn’t to say I’ve been slacking. I wish faithful housecleaning could translate into a blog post, because for the first time in my life I’m following a cleaning schedule and sticking with it! For 6 weeks people! My house is finally consistently clean and I’m not overwhelmed and I don’t have to scamper to prepare for company. And we finally have a chore system that works for the kids, and can now manage to get through schoolwork (mostly) without tears.

Can we just celebrate the little victories??? 

Plus, let’s see… we bought a house, sold ours, made a massive 2-household move, crammed in a bunch of speaking engagements, then … WROTE A BOOK …  then stayed with my parents for 10 days because our house wasn’t ready, then got horribly sick, then left the country for a week, then came home (still sick) and have been unpacking, then spent the last month doing the editing of the book and writing a small group Bible study curriculum to accompany it (Yay! So excited for that, by the way.) Of course let’s not forget helping plan a women’s retreat for our church, leading women’s Bible study.

Oh, and homeschooling our kids. And, like, parenting them.

And making meals.

And being married.

Somewhere in there I voraciously read three fabulous books and batted around some ideas in my already-too-full brain.

There are friends in there and meetings too and I’m not sharing this to make excuses or prove my worth or compare my life with yours, I’m sharing this to make an important contrast with a to-do list I discovered recently, and to use myself as Exhibit A to show what Insanity looks like.

My grandma passed away when I was 9. Now, that seems really young, but I have so many memories of her that it feels like she was a major part of my life. And she is. She was an incredible woman of faith and prayer. Sometime I’ll share more, but I’ve always strongly identified with her, and felt somehow I was to carry on her life of faith and prayer. All that to say, her words, notes, and Bible are precious to  me.

So when I found her to-do list, you better believe I was eager to read. What were her days like? How did she cultivate such a life of faith and prayer?

Simple. Her lists were short. 

Of course this list was from 1977, when her children were all grown. She had three grandkids at this time and my brother would be born two weeks later. But still, the simplicity of it strikes me. Like, she actually wrote “Get lunch” and “Get dinner” on her to-do list??? She listed “unload dishwasher” and “straighten house”? I do all of those things at once while eating lunch and visiting with company at the same time.  She practiced calligraphy?? There ain’t nobody got time for that! (I did notice that that item didn’t get checked off. Apparently she didn’t have time for it either!)

But it’s also impossible to miss this: Read Bible & pray was item #1 on every single day. I also noticed she prioritized “helping Howard” (her husband) and that “Go to Bible study” is listed TWICE on this day. Ha! Even at 50-years-old she was still double-dipping in the Bible study department. Way to go, Grandma!

See, there are plenty of voices out there telling us to do less. Nothing radical about that. But it’s difficult to do less and do what really matters. We’re told to follow our hearts and do what feels good and make time for what YOU want. But this doesn’t reflect that. She spent time with the Savior. She intentionally helped her husband. She made time for gathering with the saints for the studying of God’s Word.

No wonder her faith and prayer life are inspiring me nearly 40 years later. 

I keep Grandma’s to-do list on my window-sill, behind my kitchen sink, part of my sacred space that holds my favorite things. It gives me perspective when Insanity seems normal. It reminds me that it’s okay to have a short list. Maybe even best to have a short list, when it means making time for what really matters. 

Happy weekend! Thanks for reading. 

The same strategy three times in a row? There was no missing this. 

Isn’t God gracious? When He needs to get through to us, He makes it clear. I was feeling discouraged. Apathetic. Lethargic. Frustrated by what I saw around me, but feeling helpless to effect change. I didn’t feel like getting up early and praying. Did it do any good anyway?

For me, the “Aha!” moments almost always come in the context of ordinary, daily, mundane faithfulness. The daily prayers. The Bible reading. The ordinary obedience. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some spiritual highs, some kick-your-teeth-in conferences and mountaintop moments, but more often than not my Father reveals Himself to me in the mundane.

My daily Bible reading was in 2 Chronicles. The kings at this time were a mixed bag. Not awesome, not quite awful. They were guys like Abijah, Asa, and Jehoshaphat. Not necessarily heroes of the faith, but not known for wickedness either. 

Kinda like me. I can identify with guys like this.

First, I find Abijah. Ordinary dude reigning in Judah. But the terrible king Jeroboam comes after him, sets an ambush, and there’s an army against them from behind and before, and Abijah is basically sunk. There’s no way out. He’s far outnumbered.

But then they made a brilliant battle move. They cried out. 

“And they cried out to the LORD, and the priests blew the trumpets. Then the men of Judah raised the battle shout, and when the men of Judah shout, God defeated Jeroboam … God gave them into their hand.” (2 Chron. 13:14-16)

In their weakness, in the overwhelm, in the outnumbered hopeless situation, they cried out to God.

Next up is Asa. Again, a decent king. Then Zerah the Ethiopian came against them with a million men. Yikes! A million men coming after you. They were hopelessly outnumbered, but in the hopelessness Asa must have remembered the wise battle strategy of his father Abijah and …

And Asa cried to the LORD his God, “O LORD, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come out against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God; let not man prevail against you.” So the LORD defeated the Ethiopians before Asa. (2 Chron. 14:11-12)

Seems to be a pattern.

Sadly, later in Asa’s life, another army comes against them, but instead of crying out to God Asa decides to use his own resources. He takes the silver and gold from from the house of the LORD and used it to get help from the King of Syria. It works, humanly speaking, but God is grieved, saying,

“Because you relied on the king of Syria, and did not rely on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you. Were not the Ethiopians and Libyans a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the LORD, he gave them into your hand. For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.” (2 Chron. 16:7-9)

We often hear that last verse quoted, but it’s interesting that the context (what defines a heart that is blameless) is those who rely on the LORD.

Blamelessness and helplessness go hand in hand.

The mightiest warriors are the loudest criers.

The best battle strategy is to cry out and rely on the LORD. 

Later, Asa’s son Jehoshaphat does the same thing. He makes a number of stupid decisions in chapter 18, but when sure disaster strikes and they are facing the Moabites and Ammonites, when there is really no hope for their victory, he goes for the tried and true battle strategy of his grandfather Abijah and father Asa:

“Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the LORD and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.” (2 Chron 20:3).

I won’t quote it all but this is actually one of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible. You can read the whole crazy story here.  In an unlikely strategy, the worshippers go first into battle, and God destroys their enemies.

YAHWEH for the win!

Where are you overwhelmed? Prayer is the ultimate expression of humble dependence. Prayerlessness is the ultimate expression of proud self-reliance.

Let’s employ the best battle strategy. 

Let’s cry out and rely on the LORD our God. 

Onward! Thanks for reading.