It is so common for mankind to fall into the temptation to reject belief in the Lord God because of the boring or tedious natures of life. One could be mistaken for believing that, in this day and age above all others, we are hard wired to do so, to forget Him and all He has done for us, and to turn away in unbelief. But he would be mistaken. For truly, it is not a habit merely of the modern man to reject God out of our abundance and decadence, but a condition of man in general. It is the wages of Adam’s fall, the very reason sin is so deadly to our relationship with the Lord. Sin is that which causes us to turn our back, to run away from our relationship with God, leading us first into a false self reliance, and then suddenly into that dreaded unbelief which settles our destination in Gehenna.
It has taken some time to divorce myself from the notion that modernity and materialism are to blame, or that we are in a uniquely sinful age. In truth, it is not that the present age causes any greater inclination towards materialism or mistrust in God than we have experienced before, but that we humans have the heart of a rebel, and the boundaries which were set in the past, institutions like the church or a moral governance, have been eroded to the very doorstep of their deaths. Rebellion is coded into our flesh and our actions ever since the Fall. Our job is to fight it, and our duty to reestablish those boundaries which have in the past had served as a limitation for our wicked inclinations. We will never be free from the propensity towards rebellion, but to reject it and choose instead to obey the commands of our creator, is to be on the path to sainthood, however often we fall.
That is the point of this blog, to encourage that fight for saintliness within all of us, and today, I seek to add to that by uncovering a false perception we have on the meaningfulness of our lives in Christ, and how it is reflected in the readings for this Monday.
What we can learn from the readings for today, is that a great stumbling block for many is the irrational expectation that were God to exist, were He to show himself to us or to heal us, it must necessarily be in some grandiose and expressive manner. He is God, after all, and so any action He takes would logically make sense to be miraculous. We see Him in the burning bush, in the stroll Jesus takes on the waters of the Galilee, or in the fall of Jericho’s walls. We expect that He will make His hand so indisputably present that we have no choice but to acknowledge it is the Lord’s
This is simple thinking.
When Elisha the prophet told Naaman that he must wash in the River Jordan seven times to be cured of his leprosy, he could not believe it. How simple, how mundane this action seemed to him. Why the Jordan, he says? Why not wash in any of the rivers of his home where the waters were far cleaner and much more fresh than the Jordan? He could not believe this could possibly be the cure to his illness; but it was not a distrust in God’s ability to heal him which caused his unbelief, or some rationalist view that miracles such as his healing were not possible, but the very mendacity of Elisha’s command. Naaman expected the miracle of his total healing to be, for lack of a better word, miraculous. However, as we clearly see in the passage from second Kings, that is not necessarily the case. God works in the small things, in the brief encounters with a friend who wishes you well, says they miss you or are praying for you.
We know this to be true, but what I want to focus on today is the other side of this relationship, and how we can do our part to rebuild the institutions of faith and dedicate them to God. There is a trend in the more traditional sects of our church for converts to view Christianity as some cosmic fight between good and evil, and that to be a warrior of Christ means to pick up your sword, don the armor of a crusader, and reclaim the Holy Land. The fight is real, absolutely, but it has already been won by the death and resurrection of Our Lord, and our job is to share the Good news of His victory. When men see there is no physical war to be fought, many flounder, and wonder what good they can do or achieve to reestablish the glory of Christendom.
Just as the Lord works in mendacity, so too do the labors we perform day in and day out reflect our dedication to Him, so long as we labor for the kingdom of God.
A priest once asked me: “what do you think the furniture will be like in the Kingdom of Heaven? We will have corporal bodies once the dead are raised after final judgement.” It was an interesting question, one which I had never considered before, but the point of it was thus: even something as boring or tedious as building or assembling a chair can be used for the Kingdom of God. It is not the chair itself that is important, not the work or the pain of laboring, but the dedication of that work to the Lord. If I spent twice as long and worked twice as hard, but did it for me, that work has less meaning than if I spent half the time dedicating it to God. That is all the difference that it makes. So when we are caught in the throes of daily life, wondering where the time is passing by and how the things we do are contributing to the cosmic fight against evil, remember to stop, think, and acknowledge that every action you take, no matter how mundane it may seem, can be given to God to aid in the fight for the souls of all the world. If God is willing to work in the tedium, or in the boring and unexciting ways just as well as the glorious, so too should we.