Meeting God in the Mundane

Doing the endless dishes, washing the dirty clothes, cleaning the bathroom, picking up the clutter, sweeping the floor for the millionth time…it’s easy to get lost in the mundane.  It’s easy for it to quickly become meaningless.  To find ourselves bitter that these things steal the majority of our time.  

If you’re like me, you want all your moments to count.  You don’t want to wish the days away.  You want to embrace the time you have.  And in that, it requires us to embrace even the mundane. This was the hard part for me.

The me even just 5 years ago was constantly living for the next big thing.  Biding my time in the mundane, in the in-between, until I could get to the next big thing.  I think that is where the bitterness began.  

Because the reality is the majority of life is the mundane.  And if we’re trying to constantly get through and past it quickly, it begins to feel like it is holding us back, wasting our time, and keeping us from what we really want.  And that is where bitterness grows.

After I willingly stepped away from my teaching career, I quickly realized my life was going to look a lot different.  What I found my identity in and poured myself into for 13 years was over and I felt a little lost.  I scrambled to find the next big thing to throw myself into.  And I did, quite quickly actually.  And as quickly as it came, it went.  It failed and it felt like I failed.  And I was left questioning if I had made the right decision leaving teaching, taking on something new, and wondering if, at the end of it all, I just really wasn’t cut out to do much of anything.  

Instead of living for the next big thing and finding it always fell short and left me feeling lost, God was inviting me into meeting Him in the mundane.  Gently showing me that He was always there waiting for me to be with Him, to reassure me that my identity was in Him and not in what I did.  He began to show me that His purpose and presence was in every moment, even the most mundane.

So this is the journey God has had me on for the last few years…meeting God in the mundane.  The day-to-day responsibilities, opportunities, and rhythms.  If most of life is the mundane, then God has great purpose and presence in that and I want to experience God in all of that.  Moment by moment, day by day.  

Here are a few things I’ve learned as I’ve begun to really embrace the time that I am given and meet God in the mundane:

1. Knowing that God is in every moment, even the most mundane, takes these times and tasks from mundane to extraordinary.  

Psalm 16:11 says, “You reveal the path of life to me; in Your presence is abundant joy; in Your right hand are eternal pleasures.”

We don’t ever have to ask for the presence of God.  He is always with us.  But knowing that He is with us even in the most mundane moments makes it pretty amazing.  “In Your presence is abundant joy.”  You don’t have to love the task to embrace His presence and the joy that comes with that.

2. Even the most mundane tasks serve a purpose: to honor God and to love and serve others.

Mother Teresa once said, “Wash the plate, not because it’s dirty, nor because you’re told to wash it, but because you love the person who’ll use it next.”

We’re not scrubbing the toilets because we love it.  We’re scrubbing the toilets because we desire to honor God with what we have and to use it to love and serve others.

3. Rushing past the mundane might be missing out on an opportunity to know God in a way you couldn’t any other way.

If much of life is comprised of the mundane, how much time and opportunity to know God will we be missing if we just try to rush through it to get to the next big thing?  What if in those small moments washing dishes the Lord wants to whisper something to our hearts that we would normally be too busy and distracted to hear?  God is in the big, but He’s also in the small, normal, mundane moments that make up most of our days.  And as we saw in His life lived out on this earth, most of Jesus’s most profound moments with His children were in the everyday tasks and rhythms of life.  He wants to meet us there.

I’m convinced as we meet God in the mundane, we will experience Him more deeply which will in turn transform us to look more like Him.  When we think about it that way, it seems we’re the ones who are gaining the most when we embrace the mundane to meet with God.  🫶🏼