Laundry

It's Good Friday and I'm doing laundry.

It seems there should be something—I don't know, more...holy...that I could be doing. I've read the Bible today. I've prayed. I've caught up on devotionals. And now I'm doing laundry. It all seems so commonplace for the import of this day.

Tonight I will go to worship. I will preach about the cross and its meaning and significance not only for our own lives but for the world. We will read through the passion story and we will sing songs about the crucifixion. We will leave the worship center in quietness, contemplating Christ's sacrifice for us all.

But for now, I'm doing laundry.

I would imagine that on that day in 30 AD in Jerusalem, someone was probably doing laundry as well. Despite how the movies usually portray it, it's unlikely that everyone was out along the route Jesus was walking to Calvary. While the religious leaders and some of the population were out making sure Rome did what they wanted her to do, someone had to be home...cooking the meals, cleaning the house and doing the laundry. On this holiest of days, someone (probably many someones) had to be about "ordinary" tasks.

We have this false separation of sacred and secular, of holy and ordinary—a separation that's unknown in the Scriptures. Some of the laws we shake our heads about in the Old Testament seem so...ordinary...and we wonder how THAT can have any effect on our serving God. But it does. It all does, because the division we place between holy and common is a false division. All of life is lived under the gaze of the Almighty God, the loving Father. And all of life should be offered up as an act of worship to him. Not just special services. Not just times of prayer.

But times of laundry as well.

So I will do the laundry today. And I will go to a worship service tonight. But in everything, I will offer my very best as an act of worship to the one who gave his life for me so that I could live. He is a part of everything I do...

Even laundry done on Good Friday.