A Life More Ordinary

There is something about doing mundane things.

Like laundry, clearing your room, mopping the floor, filing your stuff... you know what I'm talking about. Things that you thought you hate to do. Things that you'd leave it to your mum or your maid to do while you do the "more" important things i.e. watch tv.

Well, I just bought a couple of guitar polish and oil restorer as I decided to really give my guit a good shine today. I got home, unzipped my guitar bag and pulled out my guit, which I had de-stringed a week ago. Slowly and lovingly, I sprayed the polish onto a cloth and began to rub it on my fret board. Then, after it had dried, I applied a layer of oil or what they call fret board conditioner onto the dark rose wood. After leaving it to soak in the oil for a while, I removed the excess oil with a cloth.

Viola! I've never seen my fret board's rose wood so rich in colour before! It's like one of those extreme makeover epsiodes when the relatives start to cry when they first see their loved ones transformed! Ok, I'm exaggerating a little, but I was still very impressed with the results! No, I didn't cry, but my guitar really looked like it had a makeover. Cool...

But in the midst of it, I felt the Lord wanted to drill in an important lesson in my life. I've never been a good maintenance person in my life. I like to touch and go. Do the "important" stuff. Never enjoyed doing laundry until I was in Uni, when I was forced to do my own laundry. But strangely, these things have a deep therapeutic effect on me.

I didn't realise it until now, that doing laundry was in some ways, my way of finding relief from my fast-paced life. So, it was with cleaning my guit. It helped me to take a break in my whole routine, gives me a breather from the grind of having to deal with so many things at once.

It's a good, brainless task. :)

But I also realised that I had been so concerned with the results, I had missed out the important part of the journey, which is the process. I'm so caught up with success, with wanting to achieve results in the shortest possible time, that I had forgotten to enjoy the process of my labour. Doing laundry and cleaning the guit, helps to give me a sense of reality and brings me down to earth sometimes. It helps me to remember that I have to slow down, and drink in the ordinariness of life. That it's really simple, and still very much alive. That it's not a set of to-dos but a real journey.

It'll be sad, one day when I've reached the peak and I've forgotten the flowers along the road, the animals I've seen and the people I've journeyed along with. Really sad.

In God's kingdom, the results are secondary, the journey is primary. The results are temporal, but the relationship is eternal.

I used to think that I want to achieve this and acheive that, and be successful and all but God has finally come to make me realise, that in the midst of all who wants to be great, it is the ordinary that counts.

"Apollos planted, Paul watered, but it is God who causes growth."