This God of the Mundane

I finally got my copy of The God of the Mundane in the mail on Friday. Theoretically I should be done reading its 73 pages by now – but I’m not. There’s too much to it. To read this tiny book quickly would be to miss the point.

I remember a time in my life when I would read at least three books a week, and we’re talking 200-300 page puppies. Then came the first short little book that took my life wrapped it around a tree and sent it in another direction, Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

This book now, this God of the Mundane book, is compiling thoughts, conversations, and personel wrestles that have been warring in my soul for some 18 months and making them spoken, no, making them written - which is more solid than the fleeting fluttering words of the mouth. And others are reading these words too.

My dad and I have a saying about good books, that their introductions are usually worth the price of the book - that's the case here.

Here’s a snippet,

“So many pastors today, famous and otherwise, are asking young people and everyone else if they are willing to give it all and go overseas as a missionary. It’s not a bad question to ask. There is no question in my mind that this question needs to be out there. But they – or someone – also needs to ask, ‘Are you willing to be numbered among the nameless believers in history who lived in obscurity? Do you have the courage to be forgotten by everyone but God and the heavenly host? Are you willing to be found only by God as faithful right where you are? Are you willing to have no one write a book about you and what you did in the name of Christ? Are you willing to live and believe – in stark contrast to the world around you – there is a God of the Mundane?’”

Rich Mullins is playing the background; I made cookie dough tonight; and there is a God of this mundane moment where I’m just another broken hearted kid aiming at loving that God of the mundane and extraordinary with all this little heart can bare. So I’ll go read Lord of the Rings and pray for my future family because God is here.

Friday's Thoughts

1) Go buy this book. My former boss wrote it. It's good. You need it.

2) Finals are almost over! 1 more paper due next week then sleeeeeeeeep.

3) Played with torches on Wednesday night after building a fire then had a churchy-talk while sitting by a lake watching the stars. Fire, torches, churchy-talk only thing missing was beer then it could've been just like the reformation... okay maybe not, they were all in pubs.

4) Le house is decorated for Christmas. But it doesn't smell like it yet. Must needs cinnamon.

5) Seriously have been considering playing a show. You know singing and strumming the guitar in front of real people, not the fake ones in my head or the Kat.

6) A week from now my mind will have exploded from seeing The Hobbit.

7) I'm now the proud owner of a scarf that has the family plaid on it! Time to eat some haggis and throw a tree - a real little tree, maybe just a twig or two.

8) I've taken to leaving my phone in the kitchen at night. The lil tart can't wake me up now.

9) "When all around my soul gives way he then is all my hope and stay." Yea, that's easy to write and say. Maybe I'll believe it more when I'm older? Fight to believe it now.

10) If I get one more request to play farmville on Facebook I'm gonna call up Mark Zuckerberg and word-punch him. Stupid game.

Mundanely Radical

Hope that is seen is not hope it’s idolatry.

In Romans 8:24-25 we read the rhetorical question: “For who hopes in what he sees?” Yet all too often our hope isn’t in anything past our noses.

Sure it’s easy to write about how we must be hoping in Jesus… But practically, like in the everyday stuff of life, how do we do this? What’s it look like to be radically Christian in a world of mundane nothings?

Doing all things for the glory of God, all things.

We’ve been freed from what we were once slaves to and can now do things to the glory of God. So, now, all of life is amazing.

A good buddy (mentor) of mine wrote a post, “The God of the Mundane,” it’ll be a book soon, but he works through just this idea. How do we as normal Christians live extraordinary lives? Because the likelihood of every believer ever being called to do ‘radical foreign mission’ is pretty slim.

The thought of being able to make friendships to the glory of God and that be a radical thing should floor us! We can get to know our friends and that is radical mission. Crazy. We can fold laundry to the glory of God. Breathing, seeing, smelling, walking, eating, drinking, any and all things can be and now are for the Christian an amazingly radical thing. Because God is, and causes us to be.