Ordinary Life

“Jerub-Baal son of Josh went back home to live.”
Judges 8:29

Like anything else out of the ordinary, war is a diversion from the usual life that most of us are accustomed to. Gideon went to battle for a season, but the clash didn’t last forever. People kill and are killed during war, but eventually things go back to normal and those who manage to remain alive go back to their ordinary lives.

We are created for peace, not for war. People may engage in warfare for a short period of time, but it takes an entire lifetime to recover from it, and many never do. We may play war-games as entertainment, but real war isn’t a thing of amusement. When it is finally over, all we want to do is to return home and be an ordinary person, with ordinary pleasures of life.

Gideon could have reaped a lot of benefits from his triumph over the Midianites, but all he desired to do was to go home to live. Only those who are bored with the monotony of daily life need diversions; the ones who are content with doing little things daily need no recreation to make their life more tolerable or joyful.

We all have a strange yearning for significance; the problem is that we only have a very vague idea of what true significance is. If we get it wrong and spend our lives perusing what we deem worthy, I am afraid we will take our regrets and remorse to our graves. It’s usually too late when we realize that we have made a serious mistake and have wasted our lives chasing worthless things.

Being significant is to do the little things that the Lord calls you to do faithfully and without grumbling. It was probably a matter of months that Gideon spent in fighting the battle, which was indeed a significant thing, but his life didn’t end after the pivotal event occurred. “Jerub-Baal son of Josh went back home to live.” We read. What did the hero do for the remainder of his life? Just a bunch of little things, I suppose.

“I am a failure,” I said to my son William jokingly.

“At least you raised three sons,” he responded with a straight face.

Such a feat isn’t anything out of the ordinary, I thought, but that’s what millions of people did before me and millions more will do after me. With only a few exceptions, raising a family is the main thing that people do with their lives, isn’t it?

The greatest gifts of God are often found in small packages. We don’t appreciate the gifts we have received because we either don’t know or have no affection for the Giver. The most precious gifts that God gives to us are available to all people and in great quantity. The things we can absolutely not do without in life are so abundantly given to us by God, yet we are hardly grateful for them. The ordinary things that we do routinely are tonics to our soul, like fresh water and clean air to our bodies. Blessed are the ones who find joy and fulfillment in their ordinariness.