Extraordinary Mundane Moments

Sometimes I wonder how to encourage people to embrace the ordinary moments in life. I’m pretty sure no one is simply waiting for me to tell them about the mundane moments of my day. But what I hope touches your heart as deeply as it touches mine are the moments when God shows up and makes something extraordinary out of my ordinary, mundane moments. I had one of those moments today.

I was planning to finish a significant amount of writing this afternoon, but as we all know, things rarely turn out as we expect. And since my mind was somewhere else entirely, well… I didn’t write at all today (unless you count the rewriting of the poem that has been pounding in my brain for the past 24 hours). What I did do was start feeling a little artistic, dig through all my photographs from the past four years, and meticulously edit and form them into a masterpiece. Four hours and 22 pictures later, my masterpiece was completed, but I felt as if I had wasted my entire afternoon.

But God didn’t agree. “Rebekah,” He gently reprimanded. “This is a beautiful form of worship.”

Worship? Is that really what I was doing? Was meditating on a poem about the greatness of my God and forming it into something that would serve as a continual reminder, truly a form of worship? The way God’s Presence saturated my living room in that moment left little room for argument.

What I experienced today was an extraordinary mundane moment. And I almost missed it. In fact, I think we miss them most of the time because they don’t fit into our agendas. God tends to show up in the little things that we didn’t plan on experiencing – probably because we otherwise don’t leave enough time for God in our days. But when I take a step back from my plans and agendas, the only thing I can say is this: “Giver of Abundant Life, what a glorious day to embrace the mundane with You.”

Live the Journey

We interrupt the normal schedule of this blog to bring you an important message:

God has been doing something in me these past four months. I wrote a book, boldly presented it to a publisher, started a blog, and am slowly sinking into the world of ministry to my generation. It’s been amazing, and I’ve been learning so much. But tonight was one of those nights that God just smacked me in the face. You see, sometimes I get distracted from what I’m supposed to be doing and God has to set me back on track. I was skimming through my new book, A Heart Exposed by Steven James, when I stumbled upon these words:

you dance on the breeze in the evening light, you leap on the curl of a wave, crashing white. you twirl on a star in the darkest night, calling, “Live the journey! Live!”

With four more rousing stanzas, Steven James reminded me of my passion and purpose. It’s the reason I started this blog. God called me to live the journey, and when I looked around at the world I live in, I saw that many of my friends and loved ones weren’t walking in the freedom God called His children to when he told us that He had come to give us life to the full (John 10:10). It was my calling to echo the cry my God shouts, whispers, and screams. “Live the journey. Live.” I regret to say that I haven’t truly been challenging anyone to truly live the journey. I allowed myself to be boxed in by structure and say, “This is the routine.” But I never really gave God much freedom to step outside the bounds of my pre-conceived categories. Not that this has been bad… I simply believe that it could be so much better. God wants to make it so much better.

I’m one of those people who strive on structure, yet I hate when routine gets in the way of the Spirit. But there I was, doing the very thing I hate. I convinced myself that it had to stay the way it was because I had to stick to the singleness theme. But honestly, this isn’t about singleness. It’s not about marriage. It isn’t about dating or courting or whatever else you may use to define relationships. It’s about moving beyond waiting for the things that won’t come until the future and refusing to get caught up in the past. It’s about living the journey. It always has been. Until I let myself get caught up in traditions and routine and whatnot.

But I’m going to warn you that tradition stops right here. I’ll still try to post three times a week, but it’s going to have a little less “Rebekah-shaped structure.” I’m not going to force anything I’m not feeling. I will only post what I feel the Spirit is sharing with me to share with you. I’m going to expose a little bit of my heart on this page. The only goal I now have is to live the journey. And I want to encourage you to live with me.