My Lord, I want to devote everything I do today to your service to the advance of your kingdom. I don’t want merely to go through the motions, to get to the end of the day having checked off everything on my “to do” list but having done it in my sleep with no thought of you, no turning to you for guidance and direction and empowerment. I want to do all that I do today in the power of your Spirit and in response to you will.
“It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a sloppail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should.” Gerard Manley Hopkins, 19th cent. British poet [from “The Principle or Foundation” in Ordinary Graces in the “Daily Asterisk” 1/5/2012 *cino–http://www.cultureisnotoptional.com/]
© 2012 Gary A. Chorpenning; all rights reserved.
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Amen. Even sweeping those kitchen floors!
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I believe Martin Luther expresses a similar sentiment in some of his writing. He reminds us that the farmers and the labors are priests (no special office is necessary to serve The Lord). I love the inclusiveness of our God!
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Yes, Kevin, Luther has some wonderful things to say about the holistic nature of serving God and about Christian vocation. That was also a theme that was prominent in some of the writings of the English Puritans. William Perkins wrote some very inspiring things about it. And then in more recent centuries, Abraham Kuyper in the Netherlands not only wrote powerfully about this but modeled it in his own life and calling. Thanks for the comment.
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