Worship Archives - Trisha Mugo

Photo by Jimmy Brown via Creative Commons

I feel the space heater warm my nose while I tug the blanket ever closer. Today, cold air is the price I pay for half an hour of stillness.

I sneak away to the part of our house where the thermostat reads 60. I lay open my Bible along with my anxious mind and discouraged mama heart.

It’s worth the frigid toes—this rendezvous with Jesus.

And always in these moments I ask myself why I don’t purpose this quiet more.

Most days Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know I am God,” feels like an accusation. I want to be still and know. So I work harder to create rest time, but rest never comes.

But always when I work from a posture of rest, I’m amazed at what I accomplish.

There’s a type of prayer we yell in frustration. And another we whisper to ourselves, but the best prayer of all is the prayer when we stop to listen.

Photo by Vinoth Chandar via Creative Commons

This God of ours longs to speak life to us. He pines to abide in us—to spill his life out of us.

It’s easiest to listen in the stillness, and I seem to only find these tranquil places out of desperation.

When my heart breaks, I come. When fears ransack, I seek out this solitude. “Here I am,” I whisper Isaiah’s ancient words. “Send me.”

So much of my time I spend searching for my calling “out there somewhere” I can never seem to reach. All the while taking for granted this greater calling that’s much closer to home.

Stillness helps me embrace motherhood, to rest into this calling of diapers and dishes. The practice of quiet grounds me with God’s purposes for me in the present.

Waiting on God helps give birth to the fruit of the Spirit in me. Show me a home that can function without love, joy and peace?

I’m learning to rest in this calling of motherhood. I’m learning to look past the work and the exhaustion of a job that never ends, because in the serving I catch a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

You know the one that appears sideways to us turned-around sinners? The one where the humble are exalted and the foolish teach the wise.

In the bowing low of motherhood I see how we’re most alive when we’re dead to self. I see how the real work is not in the doing, but in the quietness of believing.

Do you remember what Jesus told the over-zealous disciples who were eager to find out how to do the “greater works?”

“Jesus told them, ‘This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent’” (John 6:29 NLT).

Stillness can give birth to a beautiful belief.

And when we purpose to listen somehow we carry the stillness with us back into our chaos.

Bench photo credit

Grass photo credit

Rain photo credit

Photo by Mark Spearman, via Creative Commons.

Mom kept the gritty green soap by the sink for dad to scrub the grease out of the creases of his hands. Tractor grime and machine oil made a home in his fingernails.

As a child, I would watch his pocket knife scrape the black from underneath his nails. They never stayed clean for long. Roads needed grading, cattle were hungry, and fences never mended themselves.

Those dirty, work-worn hands held me and tucked me in at night.

While some men punched out blue collar jobs with disdain, my father arrested each day with joy.

I still glimpse that joy in him today. As he drives a bailer through wind-swept, Oklahoma fields, he brags about his view from the cabin, as if to say, can you believe I get to do this all day long?

Interrupt him and you’ll hear the same maxim, “We’re burning daylight.”

Although dad’s no armchair theologian, he understands as well as Adam the outcome of man’s fall: dusty earth and sweat on his brow. But dad has never seen work as a curse.

Dad’s habits teach a message of faithfulness in the way he wakes up every day to welcome work as a reward.

Photo by David Brossard via Creative Commons

As a child, dad didn’t believe in church, and I wasn’t sure if he believed in God. If he prayed, it was while he chopped wood or sowed fields by the last light of day.

He hasn’t memorized much Scripture but can preach about how an open heart can find joy in the mundane, and how a sharp mind can find interest in almost anything. And he can talk for days about agriculture if you let him.

His life speaks about finding purpose in labor, how to toil well without trading peace for grumbling.

Isn’t there always room to gripe about our lot in life?

But dad’s learned the expense of complaining isn’t worth the return. A paycheck-to-paycheck life teaches thankfulness in a way that having more than you need never will.

I can’t recall a day his hands haven’t found something to do. Maybe that’s just life on a farm.

Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t see work as a burden. He chooses to see work as life-giving instead of soul-draining.

Today my father’s fingernails still attract dirt from every direction. He often jokes that he gets to play in the dirt with his favorite toy, a mini bulldozer. As he clears pastures and levels earth to make ponds and houses, you would never know he’s working.

He tells me he’s made his peace with the One who never stops working on our behalf.

I think work can lead us all to worship if we’ll let it.

This post is a part of The High Calling’s community link-up. Anyone can share stories. Check it out here.

Brossard Photo Credit

Spearman Photo Credit

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