Daily Drudgery

“The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and fretting; coming in out of the wind.” C.S. Lewis

As a Christian, I want to change the world for God’s glory. Very often I find myself thinking everyday will be a world conquering battle of epic proportions. But the world will not be changed in gigantic leaps, but the small steps we take every day. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Instead of my wild ideas of solving world hungry in a week, our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others through the daily drudgery of service and worship. The problem of modern living is that we are too busy to notice that we are being blessed. Every day we should take seriously the command to “Rejoice always.” Augustine tells us that “A Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot.” God made us, redeems us, provides for us. The natural, honest, healthy, logical response to that is praise to God.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” (Col 3:23)

I’ll be honest, I hate homework and I hate studying. It’s an area where I have developed the skills to skate by and nothing more. So it wasn’t a surprise when God convicted me about it this semester. But I know that “if I am faithful in the small things, it is there I will find strength” (Mother Teresa).

Disciple means we are people who spend our lives apprenticed to our master, Jesus Christ. We are in a growing-learning relationship, always. A disciple is a learner, not quite academically, but more so at the worksite of a craftsman. We do not acquire information about God academically, but by skills in faith. Furthermore, we think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in a relationship with God is nurtured. One of the delightful discoveries along the way of Christian discipleship is how much enjoyment there is, how much laughter you hear, how much sheer fun you find.

But remember, the moment we make up our minds that we are going on with this determination to exalt God over all, we step out of the world’s parade. We shall find ourselves out of adjustment to the ways of the world, and increasingly so as we make progress in the holy way. The great struggle facing you is not the leave the world, to reject your ambitions and aspirations, or to despise money, prestige or success, but to claim your spiritual truth and to live in the world as someone who doesn’t belong. Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continuously, “Be thou exalted,” and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian life cease to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the very essence of simplicity.

“As Christians do the jobs and tasks assigned to them in what the world calls work, we learn to pay attention to and practice what God is doing in love and justice, in helping and healing, in liberating and cheering… The easiest thing in the world is to be a Christian. What is hard is to be a sinner. Being a Christian is what we were called for. The life of faith has a the support of an entire creation and resources of a magnificent redemption. The structure of this world was created by God so we can live in it easily and happily as his children. In the course of Christian discipleship, we discover that without Christ we were doing it the hard way and that with Christ we are doing it the easy way.” –Eugene Peterson-

So keep striving through the times of drudgery and routine. Those who work well in the depths of life more easily understand the heights, for indeed in their true nature they are one in the same.


Teach me, Lord Jesus, to live simply and love purely, like a child, and to know that You are unchanged in your attitudes and actions towards me. Give me not the hungering for the ‘strange, rare, and peculiar’ when the common, ordinary, and regular—rightly taken—will suffice to feed and satisfy the soul. Bring struggle when I need it; take away ease at Your pleasure. Amen.