Mackenzie Norman

I think what we’re really afraid of is living an ordinary life. 

I think we’re afraid that will wake up on a thousand different days and exist and never actually have any significance. 

I think FOMO is a direct result of YOLO. We don’t want to waste our lives on things that don’t matter, but we don’t know today what will matter tomorrow so we lurch forward on unsteady legs trying desperately to do something today that changes something. Because all we know and all we have is now, is today. And if today is the last day then shouldn’t we plant our feet deep in the earth, puff out our chests with determination and resolutely murmur, “I will live if it’s the last thing I do”?

I think we don’t know what it means to live. 

And we’ve refused to consult God on the matter because we think he has no idea what it means to live. He’s GOD. He’s eternal. He’s literally got all the time in the world. He doesn’t understand the desperation that seeps into the human soul when we think about dying and no one even caring. 

God has always been alive. Death never stalked him like it stalks us, right? 

Wrong. Go back and count Jesus’ near-death experiences, not to mention His eventual death on the cross. 

I have found more comfort in Hebrews 4:15 than I ever thought possible because it reminds me that the God we worship knows exactly where we are, what we’re going through, and how we feel, because He’s been there, He knows, He’s felt it. 

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet he did not sin.”

Have you ever stopped to consider the silences in Jesus’ ministry? By that I mean, the quietness of Him going up on a mountaintop by Himself to pray. The days and weeks spent traveling from one place to the next. The time in-between the crowds and the miracles. The quiet meals with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, sitting sandwiched between his closest earthly friends. Friends who knew Him and yet were miles away from understanding the implications of His complete divinity. 

What about the 30 years prior to His ministry? Living in a small backwater town that “nothing good” came from, following in His earthly father’s footsteps and patiently building item after item out of wood. 

When I am tempted to think that Jesus doesn’t understand what it’s like to live everyday life, I am subconsciously rejecting the idea that He was ever fully human. Existence is monotonous. Breathing is a constant pattern that is necessary and taken for granted because it’s the same thing over and over. In and out. In and out. 

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “…Perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun.; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic monotony that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

I agree with him. I think the Fall has caused us to lose our sense of child-like wonder at the repetitive realities of life. What joy did the God-man experience as a carpenter when He surveyed yet another set of tables and chairs that He had built with His hands? All of eternity and He has never grown tired of creating. Even when He makes the same thing 8 billion times over. 

Think of the grains of sand on the seashore, the luminous brilliance of the stars and galaxies, the uncountable strands of DNA that dwell in our bodies, or row after row of sunflowers- faces pointed towards the sun. Pattern. Order. Detail. Boundless creativity and still an inexhaustible breathlessness at it all- no matter how seemingly repetitive. 

And I confess, I wake up in the morning groaning at the thought of standing on fully-operational feet, walking with my fully-operational legs, to eat from the stockpiles of food in my air-conditioned house and leaving for the day to do the job that earns me money, because it all seems so ordinary. I view it all with the eyes of greedy ungratefulness, with eyes that see only drudgery in the regularity of life. 

But if God delights in the ordinary, then who am I to be frustrated by the very thing that brings Him joy? 

The worst part is, I have chosen to see with those eyes. I choose to see the world in shades of ordinary misery while my Savior holds out a different pair of eyes and says, “Here, look through these.” 

Were I to look through Jesus’ eyes, I would remain captivated by the vestiges of the perfection He designed. Nature. Honest work. Repetition. People created in the image of God and loved unconditionally. A multitude from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people. Beauty. Potential. Growth. Change. Second chances. Death defeated! Grace. Mercy. Kindness. Goodness. Gentleness. Joy. Peace. Patience. Faithfulness. Respect. Gratefulness. Humility. Contentment. Rest. Faith. Hope. Love. 

These exist because God exists. And when I see them, I am seeing the character of God. Jesus saw and sees God, His Father, everywhere He turns. 

Do I? Do you? 

The more I write this, the more convinced I am that I rarely choose to see my world through the eyes of Jesus. Preferring instead my lenses of “comfort” that allow me to view what I like and ignore what I don’t- both in the world and in God’s character. We’ve heard of selective hearing. I now present selective seeing. 

We miss so much. 

We miss opportunities to love people because we’d rather see ourselves. 

We miss opportunities to praise God because we’d rather complain about first-world inconveniences. 

We miss opportunities to be content because we’d rather soak in the arrogant bitterness that says we deserve what other people have.

We miss opportunities to revel in God’s detail-oriented nature because we’d rather trudge through our responsibilities with somber indifference and encumbered joylessness. 

We miss seeing God work and witnessing the wonder that fills everything He does because we’d rather live on our terms- we’d rather chase happiness instead of chasing joy. 

We could see God instead. We could praise Him. We could desire Him most of all and be fully satisfied. We could relax and know that He is always in control and we could choose to see the good that He is doing. We could be filled with awe and wonder. We could choose joy. 

The good news is that FOMO is replaceable. Instead of worrying about the road trip or the concert or the Waffle House run that we might miss out on, what if we were more concerned about missing God in the middle of our everyday lives? What if we sought to make sure that we didn’t miss Him. We didn’t miss out on joining Him where He is working. We didn’t miss out on knowing His heart a little better. 

He knows how to live and He offers us not only life, but abundant life- that is, if we choose to see Him and choose to seek Him first. That’s why Jesus came. So that we might have life and have it more abundantly by knowing God. 

The question is, do you believe that God knows how to live better than you do?