You may have noticed that life repeats. Everyday is different and the same at the very same time. I fold the same towels, pull taut the same sheets, smell the thick smell of the same shaving cream, turn the dial on the same dishwasher, walk the same set of winding stairs, sweep the same floors, mop up the same messes, hug the same children unyielding as the sunrise. Our lives typically fall into this predictable rhythm that sometimes frankly bores us. We ponder if what we do has purpose, means anything…. Furrowing our brows to see if we are really living abundantly at all? We’re all sort of afraid that we’re missing something…and that gape, that hole, that abyss you feel? It’s for Jesus. Actually, all of you is for Him.  

Life isn’t boring. It’s beautiful.   Tucked into every moment the Good Father places gifts, folds goodness and perfection into our daily everything. The question perhaps is whether or not our eyes our opened to the Gift Giver…it’s a question of whether or not we can see? Towels…#1. I have towels. Some mothers do not. #2. Fluffy towels wrap the bodies of children I bathed with soap in pure water. #3. They love pulling the hoods over top of their heads playing the frog or the duck for a moment. Gems. Gifts. Good gifts. Perfect gifts that can’t falling help falling from the sky. Goodness is woven into the nature of God.   The sameness threatens our sight…we’re tempted to think that there is no glory in folding towels or teaching a toddling one how to turn the dishwasher on, but our hands set to God’s work is always glorious. Glamorous? It may not be (smile), but glorious, it is.

Any hand willing to do diligently what the Good Father has set in her way will find delight in the same if the act is done as devotion to her truest One Desire.

He is joy. The epitome of it.   We bow down and fit ourselves into what the Good Father gives…humbling ourselves because we thought we were created to do something “more important…” and well it turns out that it’s just the same human stuff people have been doing for forever…living one day after another eating, drinking, working, speaking, seeking…. It’s the same sort of things that Jesus did, but it isn’t boring. Your life and it’s purpose and the way it fits like the curved edges of a puzzle with other pieces of other people’s lives…that isn’t boring. The way you help your husband and love your children…that’s God’s will. It’s abundant.

Life is happiness if you do it in Jesus, for Jesus, because you love Jesus.

Life is anything but happiness, if Jesus isn’t everything to you. So, I hold the faces of my children and whisper  the Gospel to them. You know, I tell em’ all day long to do this and not that…and if you do this you may get that…and if you don’t do this then this will happen…but I don’t “good” children I want saved children. So, I do the same ol’ thing of teaching them…of kissing them good night…of speaking truth. I will do it again tomorrow if the Good Father provides the breath and the next day and the next…. And I will toss their clothes in the washer again too and clean up their accidents and say I’m sorry again for being impatient and ask for forgiveness…. I will kiss the face of the same ruggedly handsome man, and run to make certain I beat the kids to him when he walks through the door. I will lay down my life for his and love him long.

Our lives have to bend into this sameness and give to it or our eyes will miss the abundance. The fullness the Father keeps ladling down to you in this everyday beautiful life.

Fold your life into the sameness and let God bring the glory in…He calls us to His own glory and excellence (The beautiful 1Peter 1). Pour your life over the same lives, doing the thing God has called you to do on repeat whatever that is…and it won’t wind up fruitless. No, you just can’t live that way in Christ….it won’t be boring that turns up but beauty. We offer our crumbs…He gives a feast. We offer our lives…He gives us everything.   He is worth infinitely more than you or I thought this morning. He makes everyday…every. single. day. drip with beauty.

I believe that. All of this isn’t just pretty words to me. He’s life! Jesus, Jesus no sweeter name I know…The One True Life and the only way you can find yours. Everyday is startlingly beautiful in Him.