In his fictional book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis wrote a collection of letters from a senior demon to a novice tempter. The book explores the various ways people are led astray, tempted, tricked, and manipulated from their faith in God. The opening chapter describes the most powerful tool the devil uses to keep people from ever asking themselves important questions in life: the ordinary. Everyday life and the boring details that occupy our attention keep us from looking at our lives and dealing with issues that matter in the long term. We don’t think about how God is calling us to live when we are planning meals for the week or paying our bills or going to work or scrolling Facebook. The mundane details of life rarely draw our attention to eternal matters. That tendency to look at only the boring aspects of the world we live in isn’t accurate to their reality. The annoying guy at work is someone made in the image of God, who will live eternally. How we act toward them will impact their forever. God calls us to live our lives in a way that helps those around us to know Him and grow to be more like Him. The New Testament is full of examples of this direction to build each other up and serve each other. Paul goes as far as instructing the church in Corinth: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” He wrote this in the context of a discussion on causing other believers to stumble through our dietary habits. Everything we do and say is supposed to help others grow spiritually. The problem is that it’s easy to forget in our day-to-day lives. Our neighbor, spouse, coworkers, political opponents, and enemies are people that Jesus died for. We don’t ask ourselves if our Facebook posts, our gossiping, or angry outbursts are going to glorify God or build others up because we simply forget that those things matter. It is the mundane aspects of life that draw our attention away from the glory of God reflected in the world around us. We never think about it, but the truth is that the tyranny of the urgent holds our attention and interest firmly. We have too much to do to stop and reflect or ask hard questions. When Paul talked about the lives of believers, he described them to us as travelers. We are passing through this world. We don’t live here permanently. We are on a journey to where we will live forever. The problem is that we forget that this world is not our home, and we forget where we are going. The cure for this tendency is to stop and look for God’s will every day. Instead of acting on our emotion or impulse, we pray and look for His will. It’s an intentional effort to see Jesus in the mundane parts of our lives.
