Miller on Monday

Verse by E Barrett Browning added to image by me.

The Glory of the Common Life

J R Miller

Some of the happiest people in the world are doing the plainest tasks, are living in the plainest way, have the fewest luxuries, and scarcely ever have an hour for rest or play.

They are happy because they are contented. They love God. They follow Christ.

They have learned to love their work, and do it with delight, with eagerness, with enthusiasm.

A pastor tells of calling at a little home in one of the smallest houses in his parish. There is a widowed wife who goes out to work all day, and a girl of twenty who also works; there is a boy of ten or twelve who is at school. It would not have been surprising if a tone of discontent had been heard or complaints about their hard condition. But the pastor heard no word that was not glad. The three people in the little house had learned to see brightness in their humble circumstances. All the dreariness was touched with a heavenly gleam.

Their rough thorn bush burned with fire.

Many people never have learned to see God in their everyday life.

It seems to them their life is not worthy of them, that it's splendour is lost in their commonplace tasks.

In a little book published a few years since there was a story of a young minister visiting among his people. One day he called on an old shoemaker. He began to talk to the old man, and inadvertently spoke of his occupation as humble. The shoemaker was pained by the minister’s word.

“Do not call my occupation lowly; it is no more lowly than yours. When I stand before God in judgment, he will ask about my work, and will ask what kind of shoes I made down here, and then he will want me to show him a specimen. He will ask you what kind of sermons you preached to your people, and will have you show him one. And if my shoes are better than your sermons, then I shall have fuller approval than you will have.”

The old man was not hurt; he was only impressed with the honour of his own calling as God saw it. He was right, too. No occupation is in itself lowly – the commonest kind of work is radiant if it is done for God. We shall each be judged, indeed, by the way we have done the work of our profession, our trade, or our calling.
 What we do for Christ is glorious, however lowly it is in itself.

There is an impression that the calling of a minister is more sacred than that of the carpenter, the shoemaker, or the merchant. But the old man was right when he said that his calling was as honourable as his pastor’s. They do not have an ordination service for the painter or the grocer; but why should the not have? There really is a splendour, a radiancy, in each one’s peculiar occupation, however plain it may seem.

St. Paul said to the Corinthians, “Let each man, wherein he was called, therein abide with God.” The slave was to continue in his trade, with God.

We should not feel humiliated by our earthly condition – we should glorify it. The angels, as they go about, do not recognize rank in people’s occupations – some graded low, some high. We are ranked by the degree of diligence or faithfulness that we put into our tasks.

You can live a noble, divine life anywhere with God. Your thorn bush burns with fire.

Perhaps you have been thinking rather discouragingly about yourself.

You feel that you have hardly a fair share of comfort, of opportunities, of privileges. You have been almost fretting because you are not getting on or getting up as fast as you want to. You have been discontented, depressed.

Ask God to open your eyes, and you will see your thorn bush burning with fire.

Your common life is full of splendour.

There is not a single hour in your commonest day that is uneventful.

You are thinking that there are no miracles any more. But there really are as many miracles any week as there were in the life of any Bible saint. Or, you have been thinking of your troubles, that you have more than your share of them. Tourists come back from their travels and tell us about the lace weavers. Their work seems to the observer a great tangle, a strange puzzle. But out of it all there comes marvelous beauty. Life seems a tangle, a puzzle, to us as we look at its events, its circumstance, its sorrows, and joys. But in the end we shall see that not one thread was ever thrown into the wrong place in the web.

GOD is in all our life!