Have you ever had someone prepare a meal for you that was made with love?  You could tell with each bite it was more than mere calories and nourishment?  Maybe you have witnessed a last second shot taken from half court…all net no rim? Have you ever been moved by words written on a page? Or walked in to someone’s home and been encircled with a warmth…complete with coffee and cozy couches? There is something that stirs within us when we experience or encounter these things…

Recently, while she was bustling around the kitchen, I told Kylee I believed baking was actually one of her spiritual acts of worship. She looked at me as if I had two heads! Such a foreign concept that something so “mundane” and something that brought her so much joy would be considered “worship”!?! This made my heart a little sad. I think we need to re-frame our understanding of worship and properly align our mindset around what it truly means.

When we hear the word worship we often think hymns, sitting solemnly inside of buildings with steeples, praying prayers with heads bowed and hands folded. Sometimes we imagine furrowed brows, sermons or an hour gathering on Sunday mornings…

But here is what a wise teacher said about worship:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday,        ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.  (Romans 12:1,2 The Message*) 

Writing and reading do something similar within me that baking and dancing do for Kylee. I feel so very alive in those moments. Sitting with others listening to their stories feels (at times) like a spiritual act of worship. For too long I have compartmentalized these worlds thinking they were separate. But it is in our every day, in the ordinary daily doings of life, that God is active and moving and we are worshipping.

There are times when reading and writing feel indulgent. Sitting with another sharing “heart stuff” feels almost too sweet. But having been on the receiving end of a delicious meal prepared with love, enjoying fresh baked cookies, or being welcomed to a home with cozy couches and copious cups of coffee, make me wonder if I might be experiencing a life-moment where I am encountering another’s spiritual act of worship? Was the half-court shot that left me in awe and the song lyrics that left me in tears someone else living out of their very best life?

The wisdom is loud and clear…

Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.*

In my every day ordinary life…may I live reminded…the every day things I do are all opportunities to live a life of worship. And may I recognize, see those things and call them out in others. May I not think worship happens simply on Sundays. May I teach my kids the things they do and the ways they do them are so very often a spiritual act of worship. I am sure many worship bacon…or create a pretty mean bacon-wrapped meatloaf as their spiritual act of worship; I want to suggest that baking, dancing, writing, creating safe space and listening are all acts of worship. We should celebrate and lean in to our daily activities…embrace the things that seem mundane…they are ways we love others and life our best life!

May You Worship with your Every Day Ordinary Life…

Jenni