We've lost something, I think. I see it missing when I scroll social media. It is gone from the shamed, wrinkled faces of old men caught in moral failure at an age when they should be busily grandparenting and planting gardens. What is missing is the miracle of a faithful, ordinary life. In the vacuum of this, lies the tantalizing belief that greatness is out there, just waiting to be found, to be had, and that this elusive greatness is to be found inside ourselves.
What might a faithful ordinary life even look like? I've always held wonder at Wendell Berry's thought processes. As a writer, he pens the most mundane, ordinary lives into complex existence. If we passed Jayber Crow or Hannah Coulter on the street we wouldn't give them a second glance, so ordinary their appearances. Yet the plain characters he has imagined have enthralled millions of readers. Greatness, it turns out, in Wendell's stories, lies in living an ordinary, faithful life. The frantic pursuit of greatness makes us blind to what's actually valuable. Wendell understood this.
"But be sure to fear the Lord and faithfully serve him. Think of the wonderful things he has done for you." — 1 Samuel 12:24
I found myself meditating on Samuel's words recently. I found myself longing for a past time, an era when, in my mind, life was really great. It was comfortable. All my kids were still at home, safe in the nest. But you can't freeze time or feelings of comfort. Life moved on and in many ways it shattered. When one layer of glass dimly lay on the floor at our feet, what was left was ordinary. Living in an ordinary place. Ordinary heartbreak and repentance. Ordinary disappointment. Ordinary decisions like what to make for dinner—all woven through daily family life, like one of Wendell's imagined stories.
In this ordinary, discontent can creep in. All around us is this succulent fruit to take and taste, that greatness is to be pursued at all costs, that greatness lies inside of us. Samuel's words came to mind as the lackluster ordinary settled into discontent in my own heart. Can I recall to my mind the things the Lord has done for me and not feel satisfied? (Taste and see that he is good!) Have we forgotten these things? I have a favorite song by Steve Green that an older friend of ours used to sing from the maroon carpeted church platform in my childhood. I can still hear his voice booming out the chorus: "Oh, may all who come behind us find us faithful..." We have forgotten these words, I think. We have forgotten the value of a faithful, ordinary life to those who come behind us. In a world obsessed with going viral and the next big thing, a faithful life is a radical act.
In the forgetting we remember other things, false things. We forget to think of the great things the Lord has done and remember the great things we once did or society tells us we might yet do. We might conquer in love again, or pursue wealth and comfort again. We might still have time to mine out that greatness inside us and make it glow for all the world to see. It is a counter-gospel, this gospel of salvation by significance. In our blind forgetfulness, we forget that the only greatness to ever live inside men is the Spirit of the Living God.
Why do we chase this empty greatness? Perhaps it comes from not wanting to be forgotten. Twenty-five years into parenting I am missing from photos in those early parenting years and already forgotten from them. "Where was mom? Was Honey there too?" My kids and my grandkids won't know. But here is what I DO pray they recall and know with certainty: faithful prayers offered daily for them to a God who hears. I pray they remember the ordinary way I make coffee each morning and sit with my open Bible while the older kids ask questions about the day and the younger ones climb into my lap. I pray they remember Sunday dinners and the ordinary effort for a family feast born of love. I pray they recall every time the Doxology is sung with gratitude to God before a meal in our home. In hard seasons, such as these we have lived, I pray they remember the ordinary way they'd come hang out in my office to talk, hashing out life and love, plans and purposes. I've watched this metamorphosis in our home, feeling the heartache of kids wandering, and rejoiced when they found the sure-footing that Christ fully satisfies. Because, we are created to glorify Christ and nothing else satisfies.
On the other side of striving lies peace—the peace of resting in Christ's extraordinarily rich goodness today. The faithful, ordinary life is not small. It is not insignificant. It is a heritage: great-grandparents on the prairie who heard the Spirit say, "go home!" and rushed back to save a choking child. It is generations of mothers comforted by the Spirit as they lost sons to war. It is a great-grandmother's Bible lined with her prayers, her cookbook marked with Sunday dinner notes. It is our kids lining the pew between us and belting out songs of praise as a family. This heritage is what endures. The world needs no more of greatness the likes of flashing fame and fading fortune. It needs more of the transformative miracles of faithful, ordinary lives.