Magnificently Mundane

I have a confession to make. I  used to watch movies at work when I worked IT support on third shift. We had a lot of downtime. To pass the time, when my work was caught up, I would read, write, and watch movies. A lot of the movies have been given to me by my coworkers. There are a lot of action, superhero movies, such as The Fabulous Four, Batman movies, Iron Man, etc. These are not the kinds of movies that I would pay money to see at the theater, because they get very monotonous and predictable. But, because I have access to them, and I was bored, I watched them sometimes.
The Superhero always has some special power that gives him/her the ability to fight the bad guys and save the world. There is a lot of fighting, flying around in the air, and blowing stuff up. There are times when it seems like the bad guy has the upper hand, but the Superhero always prevails in the end. I guess we identify with the superhero, because we all want to be special in one way or other. Hey, saving the world on a daily basis is pretty cool, right?
We all grow up with dreams and aspirations of being someone great. When you see the commercials on television where they are asking the elementary school age children what they want to be when they grow up, they always say things like, “I want to be a doctor.” “I want to be the President.” “I want to be a famous artist, or actor, or writer”, or something like that. You never hear the kids say, “I want to drive the trash truck”, or “I want to be an underpaid and overworked manager of a fast food restaurant”. But, this is where a lot of us wind up.
We grow up playing our games of backyard football, dreaming that we are going to be the star quarterback for a pro ball team. We build the ramps out of old logs and ply board, hurling our bicycles one foot in the air, and dream we will be the next Evel Knievel, soaring through the air on the seat of a motorcycle, amazing the crowds.
It is good to dream. Dreaming is what drives us into our futures with enthusiasm. Whatever the dream is, dreaming is what makes us human, and fuels our creativity. Children from a broken home dream of having their own homes, spouses, and kids, and doing it right. I know I did. My parent’s marriage was a mess. My first marriage was a mess, and ended in divorce. It broke my heart, for a while, because I saw my life going in the same direction as my parents. I did not want that. I met Peggy (my real, current wife), when I was 29 years old, and we started our family about six years later. Now I have a wife that I love very much, and a good daughter and son. We have our share of problems, but I love my family and would do anything for any of them. I dream of good things for my kids. I dream of spending my senior years with the woman I love and having the time for us.
I was thinking of something recently, for what reason, I don’t know. In all of the action, superhero movies, I have never seen Superman cleaning up the mountain of dishes after a big meal. I have never seen Batman working for hours over a pile of laundry that looks like Mount Everest, folding and hanging. I have never seen Iron Man ironing! Ii have never seen one of the Fabulous Four changing a stinky diaper. I have never seen Spiderman mowing his yard, spending half a day fixing a broken garbage disposal or leaking toilet. But those seemingly boring, repetitious, mundane things are what take up most of the time of us lesser mortals. Face it, life is mostly boring and mundane for most of us. We are not in front of a camera making our debut as the leading character in a new movie. We are not performing in a rock band in front of thousands. We are not sitting in a book store somewhere autographing our most recently published novel. We are not flying around the world in a cape battling evil. We are at home, washing and drying dishes, mowing the yard, fixing the leaking toilet, and a host of other mind-numbingly mundane things, and mostly never getting any recognition for any of it. If you focus on that aspect of it, it can make life seem kind of depressing.
When I started reading the Bible years ago, something struck me. A lot of the people who are mentioned in the Bible are people that we really don’t know that much about. They were there in some situation where they encountered God, but there is not really that much recorded about them personally. Most of them were just ordinary people. Sure, there are kings thrown into the mix, but other than that, not really very many famous people. We know the names of the writers of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but we don’t really know that much about them personally, a little bit, but not much.
In the big scheme of things, knowing what God is doing, and falling in line with that is far more important than the little handful of recognition we might get here and there during this mortal life. Some people work their entire lives to gain what the world calls stardom or recognition, whether it is in music, television and movies, or in politics. Then, after their deaths, two or three generations later, no one knows who they were. Michael Jackson was a perfect example of this. I am in no way diminishing the man’s talent. He was a very talented performer. No one can argue that. Probably one of the best. But he lived his whole life for the audience, for the performance, for the applause. His personal life was very bizarre. I suspect that inside, he was very lonely, and lost. Off stage, he didn’t know who he was. I admit, I am speculating here. I am just making a point. If we live for the applause of others, it will always be fickle and short lived. Our lives have to mean something deeper than that.
The truth is, circumstances and things can never make us truly happy, if those things are what we are depending on. Think of the thrill of getting a new car. It is exhilarating! Everything is working perfectly, unlike that old clunker you traded in. It is a great feeling. It is purring as you drive it down the highway, with the music playing, and that perfectly tuned engine responding to your every command. I love it. I love to drive fine cars, I admit it. It is a good feeling. Now comes the spoiler. The payments come due. The budget is stretched too much. But you knew it would be when you bought it. That intoxicating feeling overruled your common sense. Sooner or later, things are going to break. Things are not going to work like they are supposed to, and it is going to need costly repair. It is a machine. That is what machines do. They break. It is inevitable. The nature of the beast, as the old saying goes.
Think of the new house! You move it. Everything is picture perfect. The paint is new. All of the appliances work perfectly. The lawn is manicured. Home sweet home! What could go wrong? The water heater quits working and leaks water on the living room carpet while you are on vacation. The company you are working for unexpectedly decides to downsize, or sell out to another company, and suddenly you find yourself out of a job. The job search is painfully slow and unproductive, and you find yourself getting foreclosure letters, because you have not been able to make the mortgage payments.
This is real life. This is not life in the movies. This is not a situation comedy where all you do is go to your job and then come home to your plush apartment and have your friends over for pizza and drinks and make jokes about each other’s sex lives all evening. (You guessed it! I am not a big fan of “Friends” or “Sex in the City”! Sorry….)
I am not trying to paint a drab picture here. I am just saying this is where most of us live. It is plain, ordinary, boring and tedious. But guess what? This is where Jesus lived, and this is where He lives. This is the beauty of the Incarnation. Jesus, the King of Glory, the Second Person of the Trinity, came, and lived right here in the middle of plain old, ordinary, mundane, boring humanity. He lived among us, and died to redeem us. His life is what breathes life into our plain old, ordinary lives. His life is what transforms our mundane lives into magnificence. His life, is what turns the huge pile of laundry or dirty dishes into a thing of beauty. His life is what makes all the same old, same old suddenly all seem new.
I am sorry I don’t have a recipe for making all of your financial woes go away. I don’t have a formula for giving you the perfect body through exercise and nutrition. I haven’t written any books spelling out the steps to help you reach your business goals and become a corporate success. But this I do know. If you, with a humble and seeking heart will turn to Jesus Christ, read His words, and do what He says, If you will ask Him to forgive your sins, and welcome Him into your heart, something inside you will change. Something inside of you will begin to see that there is glory in all these mundane things that make up the lives of us ordinary people, and the mundane life you live will become magnificent!