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How to Be at Peace with an Ordinary Life · Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

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  Bart Leger: Tish Harrison Warren set out to write a book about
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  the Christian life, and she made a strange choice about where to
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  start. She began with waking up and making the bed. The most
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  comfortable minutes of the day, the stuff you do half-asleep
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  before the coffee kicks in. Beneath that mundane start to
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  the day, there's a question a lot of us live with. She looked
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  at her own days full of dishes and the same tasks on repeat,
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  and she wondered where God was in any of it.
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  We'll come back to what she found there, but first...
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  Welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm Bart Leger. Let
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  me tell you what most of my weeks look like. I study, and I
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  write sermons. Some afternoons, I drive across town to check on
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  somebody who's sick. That's the job. There's no crowd anywhere
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  in it, and nobody's filming any of it. For a long stretch, I
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  treated those low-key weeks as the in-between parts. The stuff
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  you get through on the way to Sunday. And I've come around on
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  that. Those are the pastorate. The rest is the icing on the
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  cake. A lot of Christians have picked up a message from the
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  culture without meaning to. A meaningful life has to be big. A
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  platform and a story people want to hear. And there's the week in
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  front of you. You get up and went to work. You made supper,
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  helped somebody with homework. Most people's lives are made up
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  of small things. Raising children and staying married for
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  a few decades. And somewhere in there, a thought shows up. Is
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  this all there is? You would never say it out loud in a small
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  group, but you might think about it anyway. Paul wrote something
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  to the Thessalonians that I believe cuts straight across all
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  that. 1 Thessalonians 4, 11 and 12. Make it your goal to live a
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  quiet life, minding your own business and working with your
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  hands, just as we instructed you before. Then, people who are not
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  believers will respect the way you live, and you will not need
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  to depend on others. Look at the verb he leads with. Make it your
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  goal. Some translations render it aspire. That's an ambition
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  word, the kind you expect in front of something impressive.
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  And Paul aims it at a life nobody's going to write about.
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  He's telling them to go after it on purpose. Then, he gets
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  specific. He says, mind your own business, work with your hands.
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  Minding your own business asks more of you than it sounds like.
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  Paul wrote that in a world already crowded with
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  self-promotion. Roman culture ran on patronage and public
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  reputation. And, who knew your name and who spoke well of you
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  in public. He was telling Christians in that world to step
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  out of the competition for it. Working with your hands was the
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  other half. And, in that setting, manual labor was looked down on.
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  Paul tells them to go do it anyway and earn their way. Then,
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  look at the two results he names. Outsiders will respect the way
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  you live. And, you won't have to lean on anybody to get by.
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  Paul's picture of a life well lived. It's a person who does
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  his own work and earns the regard of neighbors who don't
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  share his faith, even. You can start building that this week.
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  You don't need anybody's permission or a big following.
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  The ordinary life you have is what God entrusted to you and
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  he's at work in the middle of it. The dishes and the drive to work
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  are where most of your life with him is going to happen. Because
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  that's where most of your life is. And, here's what she found.
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  The ordinary was the place where God had chosen to meet her all
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  along. Warren came to see the small routines as a kind of
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  training, the way a runner logs unglamorous miles, shaping her
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  into the person she was becoming. She called the book, Liturgy of
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  the Ordinary. And, its argument is simple. Most of your life
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  with God happens off any stage, in the dishes and the drive to
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  work. And, he's right there in it. Those hours are the life
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  itself. Look at where she chose to start that book. Making the
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  bed. She could have opened with a conversion story or a crisis.
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  And, she opened with a chore. And, what she found in it was
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  what Paul was pointing at. The forming happens in the
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  repetitions. A runner logs miles nobody claps for. And, the miles
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  are what makes the runner. Here's today's challenge. Pick
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  one ordinary thing you'll do today, and do it as though God
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  is in the room. Because, He is. Wash the dishes without reaching
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  for your phone. Or, drive to work with the radio off and tell
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  God what's on your mind. Then, do one more thing. Say, thank
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  you for one ordinary piece of your life you've been treating
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  as a filler. The job or the person across the table from you.
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  Father, thank you for ordinary days. And, thank you for being
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  in them. You've absorbed a lot of noise about what makes a life
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  count. And, some of us have been measuring ours against a
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  standard you never set. Forgive us for that, and settle us into
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  the lives you gave us. Teach us to aim at the life Paul
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  described. And, meet us in the dishes in the middle of the week
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  nobody will remember. In Jesus' name, amen. This podcast runs on
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  the generosity of listeners just like you. If Daily Devotions for
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  Busy Lives has encouraged you, would you consider supporting it
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  with a one-time gift or by becoming a monthly supporter?
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  Every contribution helps keeps these devotions coming every
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  week. You can give at dailydevotionsforbusylives.com
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  slash support. Thank you so much. And, thanks for joining me on
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  Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. Remember, the ordinary life you
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  have is the one God entrusted to you, and He is in it. Go after
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  it on purpose. Come back next time for more encouragement to
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  help you live grounded in God's truth. Until then, God bless and
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  have a great day.