“So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life---your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking-around life---and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well---adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (Romans 12:1-2)
Some days my life feels very ordinary. Since my retirement from teaching ten years ago, I've settled into a pace of life that I'm sure would seem quite peculiar to those in the working world. When I felt God call me to retire early to go back to school, I envisioned a new position, new horizons and new challenges. I did not, however, envision days of solitude and a walking-around the house doing ordinary, run of the mill kinds of activities. Certainly, a life centered in prayer and quiet days of solitude would not have been at the top of my choices for the future. After all, I've always been a people person and love interaction with others.
From days in a classroom filled with the noisy activity of five year olds to days of quiet reflection with only the sounds of my AC, frig and an occasional trash truck or lawnmower has been quite an adjustment. Ten years and how swiftly they have passed. It's been a journey, perhaps I could say its a bit like the one Abraham was invited to take... a journey to a land he did not know. Kindergarten, ordinary? There is absolutely nothing ordinary about any day filled with the life and vitality of young children. Gone are the days of switching gears every ten minutes due to their short attention spans. Instead, God is vying for my attention as I continually ask Him when is recess? When can I go outside with the others?
So how has God been teaching me to embrace what He has for me and learn how to fix my attention on Him? It's in the ordinariness of life He seems to speak with most clarity to my heart. Let me give you an example from this morning.
I'm showering and getting cleaned up for my day. While drying my hair, I realize the new deodorant I'd just purchased has a wonderful scent. Immediately, I thought of the treks I've taken to over a dozen dollar, drug and grocery stores looking for my old standby, my favorite scented deodorant. Of course, none can compare to this one so I spend weeks looking as I watch my favorite slowly dwindling away. I was surprised to find myself feeling angry as I “settled for” a new scent. What I'd come to accept as the best for me, the thing that pleased me most, was now unavailable.
Call this an object lesson or the quiet whisper of His voice, nonetheless, I knew He was speaking. I have been feeling as if I've had to “settle for” less. As the years have gone by I've felt less willing to accept this season as God's best for me. At times I've even felt anger and wrestled like Jacob for an identity change. How long will this identity crisis last? How in the world can I have any impact on the world if I'm not an active part of what is happening “out there?” Certainly I've seen answered prayers and touched lives along the way but when can I get back out there with the rest of the world? And by the way, don't you see my bank account? What am I going to do about that if I don't get a new career?
First, He reminded me He ordained this time for bringing healing to my life. This was a healing that needed to happen from the inside out. It's been a time when time constraints and deadlines were removed so there was plenty of time for soul searching and heart surgery. As I've opened my heart before Him in the quietness of my ordinary days, I've experienced His love in ways I'd never thought possible. Old mindsets, favored ways of living, my opinions, dreams and visions have been put to death on the altar.
Today I've been reminded some things no longer work for us and no matter how hard we search them out and try to make them fit, they just need to die.
In the Message translation it says we are to recognize what He wants from us. In verse17 it says,”We get what we say straight from God and say it as honestly as we can.” So here it is straight from the scent of the deodorant bottle to you, as clear as I heard it from Him. “Be content in the season in which you are living.” He wants my attention, my love and my heart.
The following verse came to mind as I placed my new scented deodorant back in the cabinet and tossed perhaps my last bottle of favorite scent into the trash can....
“But thanks be to God, Who in Christ always leads us to triumph and through us spreads and makes evident the fragrance of the knowledge of God everywhere.
For we are the sweet fragrance of Christ [which exhales] unto God, among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.” (II Corinthians 2:14-15)
This message is not about the struggles of those who have retired from or no longer propelled daily into the culture of the working world. It is about all of our hearts and our propensity to believe the “grass is greener.” We are not so far removed from our brother and sister, Adam and Eve, in feeling God is holding out on us. Some of us are searching high and low (preaching to self here) for the things of the last season or the position we have chosen for self, when all He asks is that we readily recognize He knows the end from the beginning and everything in between. He wants what's best for us.
When we begin to recognize the season of life in which we are involved and quickly respond to what He is doing in us and for us, with thankfulness and gratitude, the fragrant scent of Christ within us can touch our culture for Christ. I ask myself, “Isn't that what we are called to do in every season of life?”
Thanking Him today for an ordinary day with an extraordinary lesson...
Letting go of the old, embracing the new, so that I can be that sweet fragrance when I go out into the world.
“Through us, he brings the knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God....”
