How Routine Is It?

By Manning Brown

Tallies Routines—all of us have them, and their scope goes from the minute to the grand. We are given 24 hours in a day. Roughly a third is filled with sleep, a third with work, and a third with whatever is left to consume our day. It is easy to take for granted the impact those 24 hours can have, both on ourselves and those around us. It’s just routine, after all. But how routine is it really? In our interactions throughout those 24 hours, we really have no idea the impact of our words and actions.

Redoing a routine life is a consistent theme in books and movies: going back and making that homerun instead of striking out, righting a relationship rather than letting it walk away, taking that chance instead of playing it safe. But when you really think about what you consider “just a routine” or “just a routine life,” you might find a story with an impact far beyond what you could imagine.

Our lives are not chance, nor are the hours and events that fill them. God, in all of His sovereignty, interweaves our lives to impact each other for His greater glory. There is blessing and encouragement in the stories of God at work in the lives of others.

It is easy to lose sight; we do our jobs day after day, becoming overly focused on the narrow view of what is in front of us. In doing so, we neglect to think about the ripple effect of the day’s seemingly routine work.

We recently received an e-mail from a VBS director in South Africa, expressing her gratitude for the Regular Baptist Press VBS material provided through Gospel Literature Services, one of the ministries of the GARBC. The material played a key role in reaching more than 200 children who might not have otherwise heard the gospel. In the e-mail, she included the link to a video that allowed us to see the faces of the children and workers experiencing VBS. It was as much of a blessing as it was a reminder—a reminder that my world of routine has impacts that are not so routine.

I once heard someone say that there is no such thing as wasted time, just wasted opportunity. Routine or not, our lives tell a story, and you might be surprised to find out that the story is not so routine.

More from RBP
Free Easter Lessons for Strong Curriculum! Download here.
This entry was posted in Educational Resources Feed, RBP News. Bookmark the permalink.