Life Regrets
I accompanied my Dad to a doctor's visit recently. Anyone who knows Dad will tell you that he is a most kind and generous man. Yet, over the course of the consultation, my Dad spoke of his life regrets - of better choices he could have made, of friends' betrayals, of the life of a business man (he had always wanted to be a teacher).
Looking at Dad's life and what he has achieved, I don't think he has anything to be ashamed of. Still, for him, as for any one of us on this side of heaven, living life here in an imperfect world comes with its share of regrets.
In our forties (the age that I'm at), I sense our concern is of missed opportunities. We are often told that if we do not try harder or take greater risks, we will regret not grabbing the chances that came our way. In the year before Samuel arrived, Marie and I felt that our time taking care of small children at home had come to an end. The youngest had started school and we could begin to explore what God had planned for us outside of the home. Of course, the arrival of Samuel, while he was much welcomed, kicked all those exploratory plans back to square one again.
The "Life-ordinary"
As Marie and I discussed, it seemed God had called us to continue living the "life-ordinary". It felt especially so for Marie as a stay home mom, if you can even call raising four boys ordinary these days. But the daily grind of tending to the boys' daily needs, driving them around, providing their meals, nagging them to study - you cannot help the feeling of the mundane creeping up on you. The newspapers love to write stories of people who have a big brood of children and still achieve exceptional success in their careers. We are not such people - my full time job and running a household of fours boys was about as much as we both could handle.
"Was this small plot the only task that God found me worthy to tend?", Marie asked God but it is not only stay home moms who struggle with such feelings. While I think that my job contributes to the building of something significant in our society, even then the daily grind of meetings, reports, staff issues etc. get to me some days. I suspect that is why I love the "Lord of the Ring" Trilogy. These stories tell of men (and hobbits, dwarves, elves and other mythical beings) who donned gear and fought wars of seemingly impossible odds against evil because they knew it was doom for them and their families if they did not. In our hearts we all yearn to know that we are significant in such an obvious way.
Power
The thing though is that we hope to find in ourselves that special power, that special gift (which explains why the superhero / Twilight / Harry Potter movies are also so popular) that distinguish us from the rest of the crowd. Unfortunately or fortunately, that is not what the Bible tells us. Apart from God, there is nothing in us that can create anything of significance, especially of eternal significance. It is God's power and ability, working through us that changes the world around us; and is prayer that connects the eternal and temporal, that creates the extraordinary in the ordinary. The consistent theme in the "Lord of the Ring" story echos that. Those who grasped for power (the power of the ring), even for good intentions, were quickly seduced into evil by the power itself. It was the humble, unassuming and faithful Hobbits that won the day in the end.
Conduit
We recently learnt in church about miraculous healing through prayer. As one preacher taught us, when we pray, we become a conduit connecting God's healing power with those who are ill and hurting in our community. Marie was very keen to learn more of this, to have a greater part in this Ministry. "But how would I even come into contact with anyone sick?" she wondered. "Why don't you ask God to show you?" I suggested. After all, if this is God's work, surely He would also set things up.
The Extraordinary Experience
Around this time, God gave Marie an image as she cooked in our kitchen that it would not be just cooking smells that wafted out of our flat. It would also be the aroma of Christ "For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing." 2 Corinthians 2:15. Quite soon after that, Marie bumped into two ladies staying in our block of flats and found out that they were suffering from serious illnesses. Around this time too we decided to meet with a group of friends from church to pray regularly in our home. We had opportunities to pray, encourage and even give practical help to these two ladies and others. After one of our prayer meetings, we bumped into one of the ladies at the lift lobby. There and then we had a spontaneous time of prayer together with her. She told us that through this difficult times, it seemed at every turn God was there to meet her needs. Even though this was not the best of times, she felt more spiritually alive than she had been in a long time. How amazing is that? When we desire to have a part to play in God's work, He always gives us a chance to join in.
Eyes on heaven, Feet on ground
Two other things happen during this period. Not so pleasant thing. One was the sad news that an eight year old boy who had been in coma for a year plus passed away. It was shocking and tragic. Many people in church were questioning why because there were people who said they had seen visions that this boy would wake up. To me there was no contradiction. Prayer helps us to see that there is a greater reality behind the veil of this physical world. Life does not end because it is ended on earth. The boy did wake up, just not on this side of heaven. The second incident was when one of our son's bike got stolen right in front of the gate of our flat. Sometime later Marie saw one of the neighbourhood boys with the bike (painted over of course). When Marie questioned him, he had answers to explain away the co-incidence that the two bikes looked so similar. Learning lesson? Lock your bikes up good. While we live in a spiritual reality, our feet are also planted squarely on this physical reality where people will take things that do not belong to them. The extraordinary and the ordinary interlaced and inter-phased - we need to learn to live as dual citizens in both worlds.
Connecting with the Extraordinary One
While I was on leave recently, I realised that it was very difficult to stop working. The work emails intruded into what should be my time to spend on myself and my family. Then it struck me that perhaps it was not the emails, it was me who could not stop working; that fundamentally I feared that I will not be significant if I do not find validation in my work. In John Chapter 4 in the Bible, Jesus stops by a well to ask a Samaritan woman for a drink. Did He really need a drink that He could not get for Himself? No. He asked for a drink so that he had a chance to connect with someone who had been spiritually thirsty for a long time. The years of trying to assuage this thirst with the ordinary things in this world had not worked. Jesus interrupted her daily routine of collecting water from the well - a very mundane, very everyday activity and in that moment the extraordinary exploded into the ordinary; and she was never the same again.
I need that; and I suspect many of us do - the only solution to ordinary is not more ordinary but to let the extraordinary explode into your life. Give it a try :)
(post script: apologies for this rather bare bone formatting and no pictures. Life is busy these days)
