The Exciting Routine of Life
by Lance Olimb
One of the calamities in life is our collective ability to take things for granted. I truly think this is one of the most underrated tragedies of our fallenness. We just get sick of things. We tire of the wonder. Something that once moved us to intense contemplation and joy now barely registers on our emotional or mental radars. If you stop to think about it, there is evidence of this all around you.
We talk to one another on tiny electronic screens from thousands of miles away. You know how the data gets passed from one device to another? The air! Invisibly passed through the air. How is it possible that both people in a FaceTime conversation don’t just constantly say “No way! No. How in the world?!?” Technology is magical but you don’t even have to look that far to find astounding things we take for granted all the time.
- You are spinning on a massive ball of earth at 1,000 miles per hour as you read this.
- That ball of matter is basically hanging from nothing as it speeds around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour.
- The light peeking through your window shades this morning just finished a 93 million mile journey lasting 7 minutes.
Why do we take these things for granted? What is it about us that makes us forget the tremendous miracles around us? We can make spiritual applications as well.
Jesus was dead. Really dead. His heart didn’t beat and his muscles began to atrophy. If you hooked him up to one of those fancy 21st Century brain scanners you’d see no lights flashing. And then in a moment, by the power of the Spirit of God, He was alive. A dead man, alive. He is still alive. Why am I reminding you of this fact? Wasn’t Easter weeks ago?
I’m reminding you because if you are like me, you’ve likely taken these things for granted somewhat over the last few weeks. I want us to be more like children. GK Chesterton (in his work Orthodoxy) once commented on the ability of children to never tire of things and compared their endless joy with God.
"The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again;" and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore."
I think of this quote often when I find that life has become routine or I forget how fantastic it is that we have hope for life after death. The point I’m driving at is a simple one. I want to remind you that Jesus is alive and it is no less glorious today than it was that first Easter morning. And certainly no less hopeful or glorious than it was a few weeks ago when we celebrated.
Let’s pray for childlike faith today. Let’s pray that each and every day we long to hear of forgiveness of sins, the death of death, and the coming defeat of the dragon. If God would grant us the ability to wonder at our new life in Christ without tiring, then we’ll be a few steps closer to childlike faith.