The Saturday Stoke #37
Listen to The Saturday Stoke
During term time for our girls, once a week they pack in the old rover with their mom and head off to their Classical Conversations co-op. The fun and frantic morning fills up with feet running up and down stairs, with lunches being made, with arguments and laughter and finally kisses and good-byes.
I like to walk them out to the garage and kiss them and hug them multiple times.
And my favorite thing to say to them is, “I love you my sweet love. Remember, do your best work as unto the Lord.”
I invariably get their sweet eyes turned up towards my chin, and a lovely grin spreading across their cheeks when I say this. And I always say it. They’re ready for it. Sometimes, I will forget to say it to them individually, and will say it tot he rover as they are backing out with the windows down. And they wave and finish the sentence for me.
“Yes daddy … as unto the Lord!”
And I also like to invade their little school sessions during the week upstairs. I’ll walk up the stairs and peep around the corner and find one them doing some work in a journal or practicing piano or painting or doing math.
I like to come up behind them, and wrap my arms around them and remind them, “as unto the Lord.” I can sense their love for this notion. They, as children often do, inherently “get it.” They understand that God watches them and delights in their work. He delights to see them use their gifts and abilities for him, their heavenly Father.
And incidentally, they love reminding me how I’m the second best father in the world. Runner up to God. Well, I’ll take it. When the girls move through their day with a focus that comes to them straight from heaven, they glow with it’s aura. The Apostle Paul like to remind the early church folks to keep their eyes and hearts focused on heaven.
I find it interesting that when we focus on the eternal, it makes the finite echo with a most uncommon beauty. When we do our work as unto the Lord, every potential distraction dims.
In his wonderful short essay, “Learning During Wartime,” C.S. Lewis says, “Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment. It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”
I know it’s easy to lose sight of the glory of our moment to moment-ness in this life. So much can frustrate and distract us. A pandemic, riots, the growing unrest in our nation. But it doesn’t need to be this way.
I don’t ever want my girls to get caught up in this very popular and rather unfortunate business of calling our moment-to-momentness the “mundane.” Instead, I want them to see their work done right here and now as glory-laden. Whether it’s Latin translation, or history, whether it’s cleaning the table or staining the deck. When done unto the Lord, our moment-to-moments glisten with a heavenly residue.
When I find myself down in the dumps or feeling anxious or frustrated or distracted by calamity, I get to work at something. I do the work right in front of me. I paint, I write, I mow the lawn, I clean the house.
And when I do, I find heaven waiting for me.
As unto the Lord!
Stay stoked my friends.
