No Life is Ordinary

David Writes...

Many of us find our lives busy with ‘ordinary’ things like family, work, hobbies etc.  Sometimes it’s hard to see the bigger picture, but sometimes it’s the smaller things of life that get wrapped up into the big picture.

For my daily Bible reading this month, I’m spending time looking at the short book of Ruth (just four chapters, well worth reading), set over 1000 years before the time of Jesus.  Early in the book, both Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi are widowed while staying in a foreign land.  As they face various challenges, Ruth decides to stand by and travel with her mother-in-law despite the fact that they come from different countries and different generations.  Just in the small details, there are lots of hints of how to care for people in need.

But by the end of the book, Ruth meets a man (Boaz), gets married and in the process becomes the great grandmother of the future king David.  So the ‘ordinary’ details of her life become part of the big picture of what God is doing.

If your life, sometimes feels ‘ordinary’, I hope you’ll reflect that God can still be at work in you and through you.

Soli Deo Gloria

David Writes...

Recently I was sitting in a local cafe using their wifi to prepare visual aids for my Sunday sermon and the lady at the next table asked why I had pictures of Johann Sebastian Bach on my laptop screen.  I explained that my sermon was about seeking God’s glory in all that we do: Bach was a committed Christian, and he wrote ‘SDG’ short for ‘Soli Deo Gloria’ (For God’s glory alone) at the bottom of every piece of music he wrote.

You may not be a composer of classical music, but the Bible urges its readers, whatever they do, to do it with all their heart as if working for God (see Colossians 3 for details).  From finance to football, and in every other field of endeavour, we can express how we feel about God and other people through our attitude, behaviour, words and actions.  And people notice!  We’ve all experienced good service and we’ve all experienced shoddy service from people who seemingly couldn’t care less, and we know the difference.

Not long ago, an eminent choir was on tour performing the cantatas of Bach, when their record company sponsor withdrew support mid-tour.  The choir’s conductor formed a new record company so the tour could be completed, and it was called ‘SDG’, showing that Bach’s fans knew what he had done and why he had done it, even three centuries later.  Whatever you do and however you spend your time, and however ordinary it may feel, I hope that you’ll work at it with all your heart – and maybe like Bach you could bring some glory to God.