“You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.”  I Peter 1:9a

My life is holy.

However, my days are filled with cooking oatmeal and making turkey sandwiches, sauteeing vegetables and filling the dishwasher.  Every day I either do laundry or clean a bathroom.  From early morning I am trying to review the steps to dividing fractions, or listening to a ten-year-old recount the events which created the Varangian Guard, while playing a board game with my three-year-old.

Is your life holy?

Are you frequently stuck in traffic?  Do you often reflect on how to avoid the next mandatory meeting at work?  Doesn’t it seem like there are thousands of daily annoyances?

Holy?

My life is bursting full of blessings, too many to enumerate, but so often holy is just not how I feel.  How is it possible to have holiness in the humdrum of daily living?  Perhaps God has not yet given me any real troubles in life, because I still seem to find daily living enough of a challenge.

The waves must have been high, the wind sporadic, strong, unpredictable.  He had seemed so close until Peter had stepped out of the boat and onto the crashing, rolling, unholy sea.  And yet he had walked.  Not because he had the power to do so, not because of his own significance, but because he had fixed his eyes on Jesus.  Then Peter remembered who he was, but forgot who Jesus was.  And everything seemed ordinary and horrible.

“But when he saw the wind, he was afraid.”  Matthew 14:30

Peter’s eyes were fixed on Jesus.  For a little while.  I am not necessarily afraid, but I feel I spend too much time sinking when I should be staying focused on him.

Is there holiness in folding socks?  In putting mittens and boots on little ones?  In the humdrum activities of every day existence?  In paying bills?  I am thankful I do not have to concentrate against tumultuous waves and stormy seas, because, honestly, getting dinner on the table and the children in bed are enough sometimes.

“Often times we are not taken over by evil powers, but we are taken over by trivial powers.”

This is a quote  from a sermon our minister delivered back in November.  It speaks, to my dismay, at my lack of focus.  I want to be focused on Christ, so that when my three-year-old gives me a hug, I can see how holy we are.  I want to know that when my oldest asks me a question about Arabian horses I can know our conversation is a prime example of the holiness in the humdrum.  Christ has imbued our every moment with his purpose and his grace.  I must not look at my life as though I am walking through a storm.  Or a mundane path.  Instead, he is guiding me, upholding me by his grace.

My day to day life often seems trivial and insignificant.  I am distracted.  I nag.  I fix my eyes on trivialities, petty demons which I create, instead of “fixing [my] eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”  Hebrews 12:2a

Conquering the trivial powers.  Fixing my eyes on Jesus.  With sincere love for one another, loving one another deeply from the heart. (I Peter 1:22).  These three boys waking up in my kitchen, wondering if they can eat the last waffle, deserve to experience some of that purpose and grace.  And let me not forget my husband.  He is holy, too.  And may I not forget you.  May my frustration in household chores and boredom with laundry never rob you of a kind word.

You are holy, as well.