My dear precious one

My dear, precious wife left me a note on a book today beside my Mac instructing me to read a chapter from her Bible study. It was a nice chapter, written in large print, because she had checked the book out from the old people's section of the library. The chapter talked about how, although we will often have very explicit and amazing encounters with god, that we also have encounters with him every day in the rituals we keep, the acknowledgments we give him. The author pointed out, that God is a god of routine, bringing the sun up each morning, and the moon forth each night.

It is easy at 31 ( I just had to ask my wife if I was 31 or 32) to get caught up in the almost midlife crisis, that seems to pass through our demographic, like the flu through a kindergarten class. What am I doing with myself? Does what I do really matter? Is this how I thought my life would turn out? I am sure to many people, who were to view my life trough the lens of their little Viewmasters, clicking from slide to slide, that m y life would seem fairly ordinary and mundane. I get up. I teach school. I hang out with my wife. Work out, eat, sleep, go back to school, etc. However, I my life doesn't feel mundane. I don't rush into ER's and open up chests, and I don't buy expensive properties and sale them for twice their value. But I laugh everyday--numerous times. I work with my best friends, people whom I have invested in, and have invested in me. I know my students know that I care about them and what happens to them...even when I am grouchy and hateful. I have a wife who gets me and doesn't mind that I am the way I am.

So it is easy for me to see how I should honor God everyday in the "monotony" of my life, because he honors me greatly in my monotony everyday. If someone were to excavate me; if they were to dig way down deep, through all the carefully plotted shrubbery, soil, and rock, they would probably find a fairly crooked person, with a surprisingly selfish center. I do not deserve the things I have been given, but I am thankful I have been entrusted with them.