Learning to Abide

Just on the other side of the bushes from my dorm is the North Park green space. It is probably one of my favorite places on campus. On beautiful days (and we've had quite a few of those) it is full of little clumps of people "studying" the afternoon away. They spread out on the grass just beyond the sidewalk encircling the frisbee game in the center - someone is always throwing a frisbee on the green space.

A couple of days ago my class got canceled so I spent my afternoon out there. I brought my journal because there is no better place to journal than out in the midst of God's handiwork. Sometimes when I write, I have thoughts just waiting to jump from my heart to the page and sometimes I simply like the feeling of pen on paper. That day, though, I had some stuff to work through, namely a feeling of general dissatisfaction with, well, with my life. And as I wrote, I began to see that the excitement and thrill that had filled my life since May had finally slipped away and I was staring real life straight in the face and I just didn't know what to do with it.

I didn't have an epiphany that day, and God didn't give me some grand project to fill my time with, but it is good to know that that is where I'm at. I'm in the midst of everyday, mundane life. It is fun to serve God when big things are happening, when you feel like you are part of a movement, part of a team that is getting things done. And it is perhaps less thrilling to serve God when you sit at your desk for hours reading The Thousand and One Nights, and you have a coffee date with that one girl you don't know very well. But those moments and that time makes up life.

I love reading My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. He reiterates over and over again how important it is for us to live for Christ even when life gets boring. He says: "We have the idea that God is going to do some exceptional thing - that He is preparing and equipping us for some extraordinary work in the future. But as we grow in His grace we find that God is glorifying Himself here and now, at this very moment." "It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God - but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people - and this is not learned in five minutes." and "It is the simple, dreary day, with its commonplace duties and people, that smothers the burning heart - unless we have learned the secret of abiding in Jesus."

So that is where I am right now, right in the midst of plain, old life. Some days are good and some days aren't, but in all of it I have been learning more about the character of God, who He is, who I am, and how I can abide in Him.