"And Whatever You Do...."

The other day I reached for a glass on one of my upper kitchen shelves. As I grabbed hold of it, a little puff of fuzz escaped into the air, hung there for a second, and then wafted gently to the counter below. Oh, dear. Honestly, I don't know why so many of us who married in the 80s felt the need to register for 12-piece place settings of everything from china to flatware. Our first table could have fit six tops, and that's if we squeezed. Besides that, my repertoire of home-cooked meals as a newlywed consisted of quiche, which Tom wouldn't eat, tuna casserole, and meatloaf. Not exactly Martha Stewart fare for formally entertaining large crowds. Now that it's just the two of us again, only a few dishes ever make it off the stack with any regularity. Hence the little puff of fuzz. It looked like I had a new project on my hands.

I suppose I could have just rinsed off the one glass in my hand, called it good, and gone on to other things, but I know me... those dusty shelves and glasses would have dogged me until I finally relented. No sense in putting off the inevitable I thought, so empty the shelves I did, and into the hot, soapy suds went their contents. As I was washing down the inside of the cabinet I thought about why I'm so silly about things like that. It's not like the world would come to an end if I didn't have gleaming glass on squeaky clean shelves. I guess I've just always kind of been that way.

In retrospect I suppose I have my mother to blame... or to give credit depending on how you want to look at it. My mother's dedication to doing a job well showed nowhere more clearly than in her commitment to the children at church. I watched her for many years as she prepared her Sunday school lessons. Mom taught faithfully for about 40 years total. She loved it ... and the kids, and she took her job to heart. She always said, "We only get one hour a week to change kid's lives... to introduce them to a relationship with Jesus, so we have to make every minute count," and she did. She not only attended Sunday school meetings at church on Wednesday nights, she also took time every Saturday to study and prepare the lesson for herself. There were lots of times I thought it was a bit "overkill." Her thoughts were different. For her, it was an act of service, and she wanted to serve well.

Fast forward to my adulting years, and much to my surprise, I turned out a lot like her. I came to the realization that time is the most precious commidity we have, and if we are going to exchange that time in some endeavor, whatever that might be, the investment has to be worth it. That commitment started showing up in my studies for grad classes. I refused to go to bed until I felt I knew the material backward and forward. It showed up in my band directing as I pored over potential scores and stayed late after sectionals to rearrange the chairs and stands for whichever band on our rotating schedule was first period the next day. It showed up in our homeschooling years as I made my kids redo entire chapters or units in science and history if I felt they hadn't mastered the material adequately. It showed up in the hand-made, hand-crafted decorations for my daughters' weddings. It really wasn't a matter of always doing excellently. It was more a matter of always attempting excellently, and knowing I had done my best.

There were lots of times through the years when I heard comments like, "You really don't need to go to all that trouble," or "You tend to go overboard." It didn't really matter whether I was leading a Bible study, decorating for a tea party, homeschooling my kids, or baking a cheesecake. Im sure there were lots of folks out there who looked at the way I was doing things and felt like it was "overkill" too, but for me, these things were simle acts of service... to my family, my friends, my Lord... and I wanted to serve well too.

I believe God made me to be a creative person. I'll admit that I often let that creativity run a little too wild. There is definitely a fine line between wanting to do whatever I do, heartily, as unto the Lord... and letting what I do draw attention away from God and toward myself. I guess I'm still working on that. I probably always will be.

What does my mother's teaching Sunday school have to do with that little puff of fuzz? It's simple really. That day, in that moment, it was what my hands found to do. Even in the little things, the tiniest things, God can be glorified, and we can feel a sense of accomplishment in having done the task well. We're not all called to greatness. In fact, most of us will live rather ordinary lives, at least in the world's eyes, but God takes the ordinary... ordinary peple, ordinary means, ordinary acts of service and turns them into the EXTRAordinary. All He asks is that we do, whatever it is, heartily, as unto Him rather than to men.

So you see, scrubbing floors, preparing meals, reading to a child, rocking a baby... these are all acts of service, and when we do them with a right heart, and for the Lord, they are beautiful acts of worship. The same goes for washing dirty diapers, praying for a sick friend, or taking homemade soup over to welcome a new neighbor. It isn't always about doing big things. It isn't always about getting excellent results. It's about finding the worth in attempting to do excellently whatever task God puts in front of us. God doesn't compare my efforts to someone else's. He takes no stock in that, and we shouldn't either. He's only interested that I make the most of whatever abilities He's given ME. Some days that looks like studying for a grad class. Other days it's kissing a "boo-boo" to make it better. I don't know what any of this looks like for you, only you know that. For me -and for yesterday- doing the whole "whatever you do...." thing meant getting rid of that little puff of fuzz, and I hope I attempted it excellently.

"Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men." -Colossians 3:23