Worship Everyday Occasions: Notes from My Utmost for His Highest
The September 10 entry in the perpetual devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, makes a solid argument for the point that how we respond to every day life is practice for being able to respond well to a crisis. However, the words at the beginning of one sentence had more meaning to me personally than the entire teaching. Those word were, “If you have not been worshiping in everyday occasions, when you get involved in God’s work, you will not only be useless yourself but also a hindrance to those around you”.
Like most people, I grow bored with every day tasks and I often complain about those tasks. The complaining only serves to reinforce my view of the “woeful condition” of my everyday life. For example, I recently had a less-than-enthusiastic attitude about every day things like meal planning, grocery shopping, yard care and laundry. There is a good chance that you are thinking, “I hate doing that stuff too!”
Worshiping every day occasions…
These words reminded me that my routine duties are opportunities for me to serve my family and to serve my readers. God calls us to serve others and I want to follow Christ’s example of service. I am serving in bigger ways by volunteering at church and in the local school and by giving of my time when a family member is not well. But those service opportunities are not a part of my everyday duties.
I do not want to serve God just on some days, I want to serve Him every day and He blesses me with a family and a home to care for. If I take routine obligations for granted and I have no joy in serving through those obligations, how can I bless those closest to me? And how can I do my personal best at serving the greater community if I do not practice service with joy daily, just as Christ did?
I often say that Christ is my Compass, and to put that ideal into action I wrote at the top of each page of my daily calendar for this week, “Worship Everyday Occasions” to remind myself to treat my everyday duties as worship. This week I found joy in those duties and the time spent doing these chores seemed to fly by quickly. I am sure my family find me more pleasant to be around as well. If this refreshed attitude is training ground for reacting to crisis as God would have me react, all the better.
I have heard similar teachings on this topic before and applied this lesson to my life–for a time. I am a good one for backsliding with this kind of thing and I can’t help but think of the opportunities that go wasted when I take everyday duties for granted. When I start losing the joy in everyday life in the future, I want to come back to what I have written here to be reminded of how I can bless and serve others by worshiping God through everyday occasions.
When you were under the fig tree, I saw you (John 1:48)
My Utmost for His Highest is a Christian classic first printed in 1935 with messages that remain incredibly pertinent decades later.
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