Excel at the Ordinary

Mercy, peace, and love to you all.

This week taught me how best to work.  I spent my first shift at Hope handling reception--taking calls, making appointments, warmly greeting and processing clients arriving for their appointments, and making sure counselors have what they need.

Many might think working reception as a less prestigious job than counseling or managing, but if "God is in the detail," then the receptionist's tasks are certainly of utmost value.

I actually took my first appointment call before I had finished learning the ins-and-outs, so under fire I was baptized and initiated into the hallowed society of Hope Pregnancy Center volunteer receptionists.

"Barrett, you're a natural," said my volunteer coordinator.

I actually have been "trained" in that before when I was an office aide for my high school secretary in my senior year.  It was my second-favorite class that year.

Now I know what information I need for appointments, how to schedule them correctly, how to look up client information when they arrive so that counselors can have files on hand and how to prepare all the paperwork for pregnancy screenings, counseling sessions and more.

The truly funny part--and I mean funny in the joyful sense, specifically the joy brought by the Holy Spirit of God--is the synchronicity of this work with current events in the rest of my life.  Two seperate Bible verses have come up multiple times in the last week, and I do not believe in coincidences.

The first was the story of Moses, the man who was the leader of a subjugated people as they left the land of their oppression into their own homeland.  Moses had a privileged life, he knew he would be an instrument to deliver his people, but before he could ever see that potential realized he was a shepherd for 40 years.

A shepherd.  Forty years of daily labor.  Forty years of smelly manure.  Forty years of protecting the dumbest and most defenseless creatures on the planet.

And then he became one of the most well-known, influential and revered men of human history.

The second Bible verse came up both from the Breakaway Bible study AND the devotional I follow called My Utmost for His Highest (the second-most read book in the world, behind the Bible).  This time it was 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12.

These word's of Paul tell Christians to "aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands."  He says don't pick a job because of the honor it will bring you.  He says keep your business in order, and that you should focus on the small and ordinary details of life.

Because "the discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic," as Richard Foster would tell us.

These lessons have come in very handy in my immediate situation because I have neglected my search for graduate work.  I still need to decide what I want to do, where I want to go, and what all I need to do to get there.  While I've done some research, the process has stagnated recently.

I know I have been privileged, much like Moses' early life.  I know I have been given gifts to help people, perhaps in great ways.  I want to realize that potential, and my vanity would tell me to go for the honor or prestige or financial security ("I only want enough.  Is that so bad?").

But what I see here tells me that even if I am forced to go tend sheep for four decades, God still has a plan that could very well use me to affect the lives of His people for thousands of years.  Or not.  Either way, whether I live or die He will be my Good Lord.

And knowing that, now I can take the ordinary things in life--like hanging up clothes after doing laundry--and make sure I do them well.  Excelling at little things proves that I am ready to handle bigger things, and it all brings glory to my God.