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 Award winning author Mike Mason brings profound and arresting insights on the life of faith. In this original series the topic is learning to delight in the ordinary, both in ourselves and in the world. Mike is a regular contributor to canadianchristianity.com, and is perhaps most well known for his book 'The Mystery of Marriage.' that won the ECPA Gold Medallion award.
[other pieces by Mike Mason]
Ever feel left out because you don't speak in tongues? Perplexed because you can't work miracles? Frustrated because no sick people have ever been healed through your prayers? Ashamed and defeated because you can't even get healed yourself?
Is all this due to a lack of faith? If you think so, you're wrong. Faith is certainly lacking in these scenarios, but the problem is not the absence of signs and wonders. The problem is the guilt and insecurity underlying your thoughts.
This kind of thinking destroys the gospel. We come to Christ believing we are saved by faith alone, but sooner or later doubt sets in. Sure my faith will get me to heaven, we think, but if I want a great reward, I must do some great works. The bigger and better my works, the bigger and better my reward. And so we get trapped by works, and the simple gospel of faith alone gets lost in the dust of our doings. No wonder Paul sounds so exasperated as he writes, You foolish Galatians! ... Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? (Galatians 3:1-3)
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Do I really think that, if I exert a little more effort, I might be able work a few miracles, or somehow compete with all the great saints and heroes of the faith? Even if I strive with all my might (which, in any case, is not the way of spiritual growth), at best I might be able to advance up the ladder of Christian success by one or two rungs. But what really is the point? There would still be multitudes of Christian heroes ahead of me, whose stars are brighter than mine, and I would never make it to the top with the likes of Mother Teresa and Saint Francis. So why not just relax and be content to be myself? There is only one Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, and I am not it. In the contest of life, we cannot change our magnitude but only our degree of self-acceptance.
Maybe you will perform miracles and do other great deeds for Christ. But if you do, it won't be because of how guilty and insecure you've felt for not doing them. Rather, your work for the kingdom will flow from a deep sense of security in Christ, so deep that whether you do great works or not will no longer matter.
No one's greatness or smallness, in fact, will matter anymore. We shall esteem the poor as highly as the rich, the underprivileged as highly as the powerful. True greatness, it turns out, is not what we thought. How can we ever hope to love and serve the poor, the sick, the homeless, if we think we are not like them, or if we harbor a suspicion that such lives are second-rate? No, if we cannot deeply accept ourselves in all our own weakness, our sickness, our neurosis, then we are incapable of extending unconditional love to others. To scorn the ordinary, whether in ourselves or in others, is in fact the supreme arrogance.
The flower of love grows best in ordinary soil. In the final analysis, ordinariness is what love is all about. The very plainness of life compels us to love, for only love can bathe all the mundane and unwanted parts of existence in such a light that they become acceptable, even attractive. The more ordinary something is, the more it calls love from us. The more ordinary someone is or appears the more he or she invites our love. Those who do not love, or who are immature in love, are shown up by their scorn of the commonplace. Everyday glory is lost on them in their lust for exciting experiences, prescribed beauty, special moments. But for those who do love, truly, it is natural to cherish the ordinary. Passion for the ordinary is the prerequisite of love.
October 9/2008
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