One of our first excursions in the midwest landed us in the all famous Shipshewana, Indiana. Known for its Amish charm of black horse drawn carriages, women and men in their simplistic, traditional garb and living with basic necessities—electric not being one of them, thousands of midwesterners don’t visit to step back in time, but rather to shop acres of open markets filled with socks, bedding, cheeses, handicrafts and kitchen fare.
Whilst buying a handmade butter-doused pretzel from a young girl wearing her beige Amish dress with white bonnet we assumed her to be Amish in every way until she decided to join us at a picnic table and tell us her story.
This energetic young girl of 18 or 19 had already taken her rumspringa, a 1-2 year leave for teens to live outside of Amish tradition to decide whether to rejoin the community or not. She decided to leave her family’s Amish way of living behind. As she pulled out her cellphone from her purse and began texting amidst our conversation, like any other teen, her immersion into secular life became more apparent. She informed us she only wears the Amish dress for work; it’s her uniform.
With passion amongst willing listeners, she eagerly started to share about her newfound church and a growing call to spread the gospel around the world. She desperately wanted to venture to the most dangerous places to risk her life for Christ. She meant a place where persecution among Christians is prevalent and where she could do something exciting for Jesus.
This isn’t the first time I’d heard people, mostly young people, talk about their faith and desire to ‘live out loud’. Nor is this the first time I’ve heard middle-aged persons with disappointment confess they wish they could do more for God—meaning, something thrilling, out of the ordinary and interesting.
“Send me to the hardest, the most dangerous place for the gospel. I want to be where there is persecution of Christians. Those are the exciting places where God is doing great works. Or, I don’t feel I’m doing anything for the gospel, all I do is go to work. How can I share if I don’t do anything extraordinary?”
I have heard all variations of these statements.
Mandy’s story last week titled, “I’m not a Savior,” is a reminder that Jesus didn’t take up the cross so we could call ourselves adventurers for Jesus; to travel the world seeking danger, oppression, suffering and even death in the name of the gospel. The kingdom focus must be taken from ourselves. God didn’t redeem us so we could call ourselves great. He didn’t task us with the great commission so we could make a historical name for ourselves and He didn’t entrust us with the work of the Kingdom of God so that we could rule. But how did we come to believe that this type of service is what God considers worthy?
When did ordinary become less than?
We too often take the ‘big’ stories of the Bible and assume them to be precisely what God is asking of us in order to be found faithful when the most amazing events are birthed out of the ordinary and average stories. Truly, sometimes we are to take up our cross and bear struggles, feats, and even go to unimaginable places, but most often our call to be great is in the midst ordinary life.
As much as I love a good missionary biography, we also take these stories of men and women of past and immortalize them as spiritual giants who did insurmountable tasks, faced life-threatening situations and won hundreds for God’s kingdom at their expense. In this form of story-telling, we’ve fantasized them and have done a great injustice to their story as well as slightly twisted the truth of the matter in the name of mobilizing new workers to the ever needy and dangerous world. When if faced with these saints I believe they would admit their normalcy, their humility, and inabilities. They would likely confess their often unwillingness and great dependence on their God in the mundane day-in and day-out toil of regular life.
The aim
God doesn’t need us to be great for Him. He doesn’t need us to be dare devils on behalf of the Bible. He surely doesn’t expect us to be the opposite of every bone in which He intricately and intimately designed us in which to operate. He’s not asking us to go out of our way to be in the midst of danger in order to leave a legacy in His name or ours.
He’s already taken the danger upon Himself. He’s already gone to the depths of our earth. He’s already mended what has been broken, fought the eternal battle over sin. Since the beginning of
So what does God truly expect of us ordinary, normal people in our regular lives…
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you?, but to do justice, and to love kindness (mercy), and to walk humbly with [our] God.
Micah 6:8 (ESV)
Dear fellow wanderer,
I cross paths with many Christians who struggle with feeling they give less than enough to God in service. I meet people who feel disappointed they can’t serve as cross-cultural workers, or can’t give money or serve in para-church ministries. They feel as though being ordinary isn’t enough for God. I believe as God’s created children we are made to reflect the nature of God, so we naturally desire to live meaningful, purpose-filled lives, but we’ve somehow distorted the fact that we are extraordinary apart from where we go, what we do or how many people we see saved. We’ve lost touch with the reality that a meaningful and exciting life can be lived in the ordinariness of life and give God great glory. This is where I wish to wander over the weeks to come. I encourage you to join the wandering way with me so we can reclaim the gloriousness that is found in our ordinariness.
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**Photo: Graves of ordinary Christians in China. One of which was a foreign worker who sailed for three months to China only to die a month later. We could ask, was it worth it? Was God still glorified?
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