A Liturgy for Ordinary Work

Devotional

Nobody claps for the dishes.

Nobody posts about the spreadsheet you fixed, the diaper you changed, the invoice you sent, the floor you mopped at 11 PM after everyone else went home. You did it. It got done. And tomorrow it'll need doing again.

Most of your life is this. Not the big moments. The small, repeated, unnoticed ones. And if you're honest, somewhere along the way you started to believe that the unnoticed work is the unimportant work. That real significance lives somewhere else. In the platform. In the title. In the thing people see.

I've believed that too. I've spent years in rooms where the work was loud. And I can tell you the loud work isn't more holy. It's just louder.

Here's what Paul says. "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." Look at how low he goes. Eating. Drinking. The most ordinary things a body does. And he attaches the glory of God to them. Not to preaching. Not to missions. To lunch. That's not Paul being cute. That's Paul telling you there is no category of life that sits outside of worship.

Then Colossians 3 gets even more specific, and you need to know who he's writing to. Slaves. People whose work was the definition of unnoticed. And to them he says, "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men." That phrase "as for the Lord" changes the audience. You're not performing for the boss. You're not performing for the spouse who didn't notice. You're serving Christ. "You are serving the Lord Christ." That's the sentence. Your work has a recipient, and it isn't the person who forgot to say thank you.

And notice the promise attached. "From the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward." Nobody on earth may pay you for the faithfulness nobody saw. But God keeps books that don't lose entries.

Ecclesiastes adds some urgency. "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work... in Sheol, to which you are going." That's blunt. You're going to die. The window for ordinary faithfulness closes. So don't sleepwalk through it waiting for something that matters. This is the thing that matters. This is the only Tuesday you get.

Now here's the center of it.

Jesus spent thirty years doing ordinary work before he did three years of public ministry. Thirty years. Sawdust. Splinters. Customers. Nobody wrote any of it down. The Son of God, who made the cedars, stood at a bench and cut them into tables for people who didn't know who he was. And the Father's verdict at the end of those thirty hidden years, before a single miracle? "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

The hidden work pleased him.

And then Jesus did the most unnoticed work of all. He washed feet. He carried a cross outside the city where the unimportant things were done. He did the work nobody wanted, for people who didn't say thank you, and he did it to the glory of God. Your ordinary work isn't a distraction from following Jesus. It's one of the main places you get to look like him.

So "commit your work to the LORD." Before you open the laptop. Before you start the load of laundry. Hand it to him. Say, this is yours. Then do it with your might.

The dishes still won't clap. But he sees. He was pleased with a carpenter. He'll be pleased with you.