{"id":179,"date":"2020-09-30T19:57:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T23:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=179"},"modified":"2020-12-02T20:01:11","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T01:01:11","slug":"work-is-worship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/30\/work-is-worship\/","title":{"rendered":"Work is Worship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cThe scandal of Christianity in our day is the heresy of a five percent spirituality.\u201d

That\u2019s the claim of Quaker devotional writer Richard Foster.  What he means is that far too many followers of Jesus take a Tupperware approach to reality.  They seal off 5% of their lives to experience God.  And the rest of the time?  They assume they\u2019re on their own. 

Beginning Bible students can be forgiven for thinking that God tends to show up only at special times and places. 

Moses meets God at a burning bush.  Elijah hears the gentle whisper of God\u2019s voice while standing at the entrance of a cave.  Jacob dreams of a ladder to heaven while resting his head on a rock in the middle of nowhere.  Again and again God breaks into human lives by means of prophetic sermons and angelic visits.

But most of these experiences appear to be one-and-done.  Moses never says, for instance, \u201cHey everybody, meet me at the bush tomorrow at 4 pm; that\u2019s where God hangs out.\u201d 

Where can we expect to experience God today?  We can pursue a path that\u2019s been blazed by generations of disciples.  It\u2019s called \u201cpraying the ordinary.\u201d  We practice God\u2019s presence in the midst of every aspect of our lives as they already exist. 

God isn\u2019t waiting to be found in the spectacular or the heroic.  He\u2019s waiting for us to encounter him while we\u2019re shopping for groceries, changing diapers, and pumping gas. 

We don\u2019t need to book a flight to the Holy Land or venture to a specially designated sacred place, as was true during Bible times.  That\u2019s because the location of God\u2019s temple has changed.  If you\u2019re a lifelong learner of Jesus, then you<\/u><\/em> are God\u2019s temple.  Wherever you go, God is going with you.  Every spot on earth is now sacred space. 

Ruth Bell Graham, Billy Graham\u2019s wife, used to have a sign hanging in her kitchen above the sink where she washed the dishes:  \u201cDivine worship offered here three times daily.\u201d 

God is available through the bread and wine of the Lord\u2019s Supper; a walk through autumnal woods; the soaring notes of a choral cantata; and soapy water filled with dirty dishes. 

The apostle Paul writes in Colossians 3:17, \u201cWhatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.\u201d  To do something in Jesus\u2019 name means to do it in a manner consistent with his character.  That means we build a Habitat for Humanity house the way Jesus would build it.  And we chop tomatoes the way Jesus would chop tomatoes. 

Our so-called \u201cspiritual life\u201d isn\u2019t confined to those few moments when we might stop and say, \u201cNow I\u2019m going to try to be spiritual.\u201d  Instead, it is the way we relate to God and the way God relates to us during all of life\u2019s moments.

All our work, therefore, becomes holy. 

But what about the moments when we seem to be doing nothing at all? 

Much of life turns out to be waiting.<\/em>  It\u2019s estimated that the average American citizen will spend six months of their life waiting for red stoplights to turn green, and four months sorting third class mail \u2013 waiting, essentially, to find something worth reading.

After we come into the world, much of life is waiting to grow up until we\u2019re big enough; then waiting for graduation; waiting to see if there is a life partner who will delight in us; waiting for a promotion; waiting for retirement; then waiting to die. 

In all of this waiting, once again we remember Jesus.  He waited until the final three years of his life before stepping into public ministry.  Prior to that, the people of Israel had been waiting for almost 2000 years for the Messiah to come, and we\u2019ve been waiting for almost 2000 years since for the Messiah to return. 

God isn\u2019t merely in the events we are anticipating.  God is in the waiting, too.

When we put all this together, it seems clear that something amazing can happen, even on the most ordinary of days:

Our working and our waiting can become worship. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe scandal of Christianity in our day is the heresy of a five percent spirituality.\u201d That\u2019s the claim of Quaker devotional writer Richard Foster.  What he means is that far too many followers of Jesus take a Tupperware approach to reality.  They seal off 5% of their lives to experience God.  And the rest of the time?  They assume they\u2019re… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51,50,49,52],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ordinary-life","tag-waiting","tag-work","tag-worship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}