Some days, it’s hard to get going in the morning when I am not looking forward to anything I have to do that day. Drudgery, I think to myself.
Maybe it’s the weather these days. I feel like a sticky, slimy slug most of the time. Whoever invented the word sluggish must have lived in Dar es Salaam in January.
Maybe it’s because the particular set of tasks assigned to me right now are not really my first choice in life. I am in currently in charge of slogging through the paperwork to process our mission personnel’s visas. On our ministry team, I am responsible for accounting and marketing. Both of which are not my strengths, and almost not even my weaknesses.
Of course, just trying to live in a developing country doesn’t help. It can take half a day to find the right-size light bulb. The electricity doesn’t always work. The roads don’t always work. The water doesn’t always work. All my best laid plans for productivity often go to waste.
Some days, I just feel so tired. I give up. You win, World. Congratulations. Just let me lie on the floor in peace.
But I do get up.
This I call to mind: Faithfulness in drudgery is what faithfulness is all about. Most of life is drudgery, isn’t it? The messes, the commute, the weeds that keep growing, the bellies that need feeding, the clothes that need washing.
But the messes and the crying children and the electricity problems are just the individual puzzle pieces. Alone, they seem endless and pointless. But when I step back and give myself perspective, I remind myself that the visa applications and the search for working copy machines are part of a wider, much more glorious picture of what God is using us to do in Tanzania. When I step back, I see that the cooking and the homework and the messes are part of the much more glorious picture of what God is doing in our family.
Every trudging step has meaning.
There will be an end, and there always is a point.
Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God. (Jim Elliot)
This life is the will of God for me right now. So here’s to living to the hilt.
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