Profoundly ordinary

I had a very ordinary day today. After it was nearly over, I started thinking about my ordinary days and my Christian walk. In the Bible, it's all action stories, Noah building the ark, Moses parting the Red Sea, Joshua marching around Jericho, David fighting battles, Jesus preaching, teaching, and healing. Big action. Lots of it. I've had some big action days, and they're great. But most of my days are very ho-hum. Like today - just the doing of necessary things with a bit of relaxation thrown in.

It was a fairly typical day in my life as a stay-at-home mom with 3 small children. I had to get up early to make sure that I was ready to whisk my 5 year old daughter off the the lab for her routine well-check blood tests. One of them required her to not eat, so I wanted to get her there ASAP. Like me, she gets very grumpy when she's hungry. Of course she objected - loudly. Afterwards I thought she deserved a treat, so I got us some breakfast at McDonald's and let her play in the really big outdoor play park they had. Then since we were already headed in the right direction, we went to exchange the flip flops for her and her brother (in which mommy accidentally picked up last year's size - but they looked right, man those little feet grow fast!)

I dropped her off at home, grabbed some ice water and a book, and my forms, and headed off to the DMV to renew my license. Which of course takes forever - I had waited an hour by the time I was all done, and grateful I was that it was *only* that long. I enjoyed the book I brought. It's not my usual genre, but very compelling, called The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I usually go after happy fluffy fiction, but since I am trying to wean myself off romance novels (that's a whole other story) this is doing nicely in holding my interest.

So I got done with my necessary errands, and after my husband left to go do his teacher end of year thing and sign off his classroom, I spent a happy afternoon catching up on reading my own favorite blogs. One of my favorites, Stuff Christians Like by Jon Acuff, had a bunch of new posts. Also on one of his other ones, 97 Seconds With God he is doing a wonderful chapter by chapter devotional on Genesis. Awesome stuff!

When my baby son started climbing the walls (almost literally, this little guy has monkey genes in him somewhere, I swear) I decided a nap would be good for him and for his mama. So I did. I find it really hard work to spend a morning hurry up and waiting.

As I was dozing, I realized that my day certainly did not seem to fit your typical action Bible story. It made me wonder what God thinks of my ordinary days. Really most of my time is spent doing the necessary chores of living. By the time I'm done running errands, grocery shopping, cooking, doing laundry, paying bills, filling out forms, shuttling kids, attending meetings, and feeding, clothing, and caring for 3 children (oh, yeah, and cleaning - er, occasionally) there's really nothing left of me to be extraordinary.

Like many Christians, I try to have a quiet time (not always every day, but as I'm able.) During which I read about the exploits and adventures of all our Bible heroes. Only laundry and grocery shopping are not very adventurous. Unless you include trying to keep the laundry pile from swallowing me and fighting traffic in the parking lot - not your typical Bible adventure. But in the middle of my musing I remembered two things that Jon Acuff mentioned in recent posts. One, that Adam and Eve spent their time in the Garden just hanging out with God. Hanging out with - not looking for, avoiding, pleading with, or bargaining with - just, hanging out. Like friends do.
The one that really got me though was when he reminded me of the verse that says that "Noah walked with God". That was before he built the ark. He spent all those years walking with God. Hmmmm....

So Adam and Eve tended the garden and looked after the animals, and hung out with God. Noah married and raised a family, fished or farmed or worked a trade, and hung out with God. Kinda makes me wonder if maybe I've been trying too hard...again.