I’m very excited to begin this book by Gene Edward Veith. It’s a book on Luther’s doctrine of Vocation as it applies to our callings within our families. From chapter 2 Veith writes:
“Christians can feel that their everyday lives have no meaning. They want to escape their mundane lives by means of transcendent spiritual experience. In I Corinthians 5, we see that believers can also imagine a disconnect between their daily lives and the faith they profess. More common, though, is the notion that they have to do “spiritual things” – church work, or Bible study or witnessing – in order to serve God, sometimes at the expense o their families. This devaluing of ordinary life can be so firmly rooted in our expectations that many Christians will accept only extraordinary supernatural experiences as counting for their spiritual lives, while missing God’s presence in the ordinary and the everyday.
The doctrine of vocation, in contrast, brings the physical and the spiritual together, so that spiritual reality becomes tangible. The ordinary doesn’t need to be a burden we bear to escape when we learn to discern God’s presence in the everyday patterns of life. Physical reality, including our everyday tasks and callings, becomes transfigured with the presence of God.”
You may hear more from these pages from time to time. I think there will be a lot of great thoughts to share (Veith’s, probably not mine).
