On Conversion...and the Ordinary

On conversion

Before I became a Christian I do not think I fully realized that one’s life, after conversion, would inevitably consist in doing most of the same things one had been doing before, one hopes, in a new spirit, but still the same things.

From The Weight of Glory
Compiled in Words to Live By
The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976, revised 1980 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

It is the ordinariness of their lives after coming to faith in Christ or being renewed in that faith that causes many Christians to lose touch with Christ.

It's as though they think that becoming a new creation means they still don't have to take out the trash, scrub the toilets, endure annoying people, peel the potatoes, or clean out the stalls.

Or, they think, if they must do them, they will always do so with smiles on their faces.

But this isn't the resurrection world. The trash still needs to be taken out. On the other hand, when you're in the new creation, yet still not resurrected, you also realize that maybe sometimes, you are the annoying person.

And after all, not all the ordinary things of life are so awful. I hope that we get to do some of them in eternity. In fact, some of the greatest joy and happiness in this life resides in simple pleasures: the smell of a newborn, the touch of a lover's hand while walking through woods, the laughter of a friend. These too are ordinary things that can be cherished all the more when one knows and has intimacy with Christ.

And even in those tasks we call "work," there's a certain sense of accomplishment--a sense that we are co-conspiring with God in the care of His creation--when we take out the trash, peel the potatoes, or clean out the stalls.

Sometimes, through a mirror dimly, our conversion to Christ can help us see that the ordinary is really extraordinary.