“…and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.”
1 Thessalonians 4:11-12
If you’ve ever flown in a plane or summited a lofty mountain, you know firsthand what the phrase “bird’s-eye view” means. It’s pretty cool to look out a plane window and see all the tiny roads, houses, agriculture circles, and more. Indeed, having that kind of perspective is quite an experience–to be above the clouds. However, we’re not meant to stay there. As enjoyable as it is to feel the power of flight and witness the panoramic vistas atop a mountain range, those moments are temporary and fleeting.
What do I mean?
The exhilaration of looking down upon the earth from a comfortable plane seat and soaking in the surrounding scenery below from the mountain’s peak is unsustainable because it’s uninhabitable over the long haul. Those environments are simply not designed to establish civilizations. They serve a different purpose.
Now, we all know this practically when it comes to plane rides and summiting a mountain with a good view. But do we realize it when it comes to our spiritual life?
What do I mean when I say “spiritual life?”
Have you ever attended a church camp where you felt a profound sense of spiritual awe? What about serving the Lord in some capacity? Or a nice long, quiet time where your thoughts were undistracted, and you were focused intently on God’s Word. Then, all of a sudden, you sense a profound peace or spiritual joy. At that moment, it’s hard to imagine descending that spiritual “mountain-top” experience and reengaging in the mundane expectations of an ordinary life.
You know what I mean?
You’re having a quiet time, engaged in prayer, or reflecting on something the Lord is showing you in His Word–you’re experiencing something profound in your spiritual life. Then you realize you forgot to turn off your notifications, and the phone rings, the email flashes a “1” above the envelope, or a text message has made its way through to your phone. You’re shaken from what might be called a spiritually engaged moment to requiring your undivided attention, calling you to confront the ordinary.
I have, and in those top-of-the-mountain moments, the valley below starts to take on a melancholy hue. If not careful, we may even begin to resent the ordinary, or at least not appreciate them.
How do we live well in those ordinary times and not live for those extraordinary (mountain-top) times?
(1) Appropriating the mountain top experiences and (2) Embracing the everyday mundane.
Appropriating the Mountain Top Experiences
Oswald Chambers, in his My Utmost for His Highest (October 1), argues that those times on the mount are for two purposes: (1) inspiration and (2) formation.
(1) Regarding inspiration, as good as those experiences are and as much as we would like to repeat them, we simply cannot because we are not built for them, and they were not built for us. Practically speaking, our world won’t let us sit and read our Bibles and pray for hours each day. Most of us must get up, go to work, and/or care for others in some form or fashion. Instead, those moments of exhilaration are for inspiring us as we descend back to the ordinary. Chambers says, “We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all.“
(2) Regarding formation, Chambers says, “We are apt to think that everything that happens is to be turned into useful teaching, it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz., into character. The mount is not meant to teach us anything, it is meant to make us something.” In other words, Chambers argues that mountain-top moments are not to give us more knowledge to fill our brains but be an encounter that shapes us into something–or someone, namely, to the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18).
Embracing the Every Day Mundane
Is it possible for ordinary moments preparing dinner, changing diapers, taking out the trash, cutting the grass, helping with a child’s homework, cleaning dishes, showing up on time to the office, and having an extended conversation with someone about something that doesn’t have any purpose except to connect relationally, not to be appreciated as they ought?
In reality, if we take a brief inventory of our day and say we sleep for seven hours, then we have approximately 17 hours of ordinary to engage. Now, let’s say work is eight hours, and then we’re left with nine ordinary hours each day. Okay, let’s say we spend an hour of that nine reading our Bibles and praying, then we’re left with eight hours of ordinary per day. That’s eating, commuting to and from work, exercising, connecting relationally with friends and loved ones, and more. In other words, we have much more ordinary time to engage than we usually realize.
How do we appropriate the extraordinary and embrace the everyday mundane?
We’ll answer these questions in part 2 of The Noble Valley.
— October 2, 2024