Right now, all of England is celebrating with great hoopla the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. In 1957, when I was a little four year old girl and Queen Elizabeth was still a young woman and newly crowned queen, she visited the Buckingham Fountain in Chicago. My grandmother and I traveled into the city by train to see the Queen. I still have vivid memories of that day, the crowds, the beautiful blue day on the lakefront, and the long red carpet.
And today, as a grown woman, I think about Her Majesty in light of living to our potential and finding purpose in what we do. As Queen, certainly, Elizabeth has an important job, a pinnacle of importance and influence in this world. And what about me? Have I fulfilled my purpose? Or squandered my time, when I could have been doing something far more significant with my life? Does what I do really matter?
One of my heroes is Brother Lawrence, a monk who spent his life scrubbing pots in a kitchen and, later, when he was old, repairing worn-out sandals. Although these were the lowliest of jobs in the monastery where he served, Brother Lawrence realized through years of obscure ordinary work the countercultural impact of his relationship with God. When he entered the monastery in Paris in 1638 at the age of 24, he felt called to do great things for God. He despised ordinary work, and I suppose, he was dismayed when he was assigned the washing of dishes for the next 30 years. But amidst the grunge of a kitchen in the 1600s, God worked on his heart and Brother Lawrence devoted himself to do everything there with excellence for the love of God – no matter what. So it was not the WHAT he did that motivated him, but he saw his work as a form of worship and love for God. Even that which seemed lowly, puny and obscure in the eyes of men became a vehicle for Brother Lawrence to live on a deeper level a life that saw from God’s perspective what in reality is truly significant and profound.
In Practicing the Presence of God, a book compiled of his writings after his death in 1691, Lawrence writes, "Nor is it needful that we should have great things to do. . .We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of Him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before Him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God."
Brother Lawrence saw the tremendous value in what the world saw as mundane, and God changed him as a result. "I began to live as if there were no one save God and me in the world… The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen and while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.” Work was a means of worship.
When God is not the sole focus of our lives and the core of who we are, we HAVE to seek recognition and accomplishment in the world, because there is a huge gaping HOLE in our hearts, a hole that only God can fill, no matter how hard and how much we try to stuff to fill up the emptiness. The world promises performance will fill that sense of purpose, but instead God reveals that it is grace. It is only when He fills us that we will be fulfilled. What we do is not significant in itself, but a profound outpouring of His love within. There are no insignificant things in the eyes of God, no menial tasks done in His Name.
I often feel so little in the things that I do, in light of the important things that others do. And then I realize that my fulltime job is faithfulness to God. In God’s eyes, serving Him is the ultimate privilege of being a child of the King. When done with excellence and in His name, there is as much significance in scrubbing pots and pans or cleaning bathrooms in God’s perspective as in being the Queen of England.
It is not how we look at it. But how God does.
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