Do you ever wonder what a pastor does on his day off? Yeah, I didn’t think so. It’s not something you’d think much about unless the matter was brought to your attention. Well, my day off was yesterday. And I’d like to tell you about it, not because it was extraordinary, but because it was perfectly ordinary. In my understanding of God’s plan for our lives, most days are going to be rather ordinary (even days off). But the neat thing is that extraordinary grace is evident in ordinariness. So, this is kind of a play-by-play commentary of my ordinary day off…
- 7:00am – Rise and shine. I worked until late Tuesday night, so Jamie was sweet to let me sleep in a bit. It felt good to sleep. And the Lord was good to give it to me.
- 8:00am – Breakfast. After enjoying eggs and muffins together, our family read some of the book of Jude and meditated on the first couple verses. We meditated on the instruction to “earnestly contend for the faith.” We compared this idea to a professional boxer who is contending for the heavyweight title. He vigorously fights for the title, doing everything in his power to win. As believers, we are to vigorously fight for the faith (i.e. the Gospel), doing everything in the power of the Holy Spirit to honor the Lord. How cool is it that my family has the freedom to sit and read and talk about the Bible on a Wednesday morning? That’s grace.
- 9:00am – Friendship. My friend Ben came over to the house and we spent a couple hours together talking about life, ministry, and a book we are reading (The Shepherd Leader). We also had the privilege of praying for friends and family who really need the Lord’s mercy right now. This was a blessed time with a good friend. God’s grace again.
- 11:00am – School. My boys are in school, home school that is. As the principal of Limbaugh Academy it has been brought to my attention by one of the moms that I should be active in the students’ educational endeavors. Hey, I completely agree! So I went upstairs and helped the boys in science and language. We had a lot of fun with it. The science lesson was on GERMS. Yikes! And the language lesson was on SENTENCES. Fyi – A sentence is a complete thought. It has a subject and a predicate. Anyway, I am amazed by all the things my boys are learning in school. Additionally, they are gaining a solid view of the world from a Biblical perspective. Grace!
- 2:00pm – Tractor. Our tractor has been inoperable pretty much all summer. So I tried to go and revive it. After killing about 300 wasps, I hooked the battery up to a charger and let it charge for hours. At 11pm I tried to crank it again. Not happening! The curse of Genesis 3 strikes again. There has to be grace in there somewhere though. Oh, a single wasp didn’t sting me. Great grace.
- 3:00pm – 11:00pm – Storage Building Cleanup. Basically, our storage building looked like Hurricane Isaac had decided to just hang out there for a few hours. It was crazy-messy. So I pretty much took everything out, restructured what goes where, and put everything back in. Meanwhile, I listened to Christian radio stations on the little boom box and was blessed by the preaching of Adrian Rogers, encouraged by the wisdom of Money Matters, edified through music by artists like Chris Tomlin and Casting Crowns. My boys helped me off and on. And Jamie had her outside projects going simultaneously. We helped each other here and there, exchanging husband/wife pleasantries in the midst. It was a nice afternoon. Grace all around.
My day off was refreshing, productive, encouraging, but quite ordinary. Nothing glamorous. Nothing super-exciting. Nothing to write about really. But if the Lord were to take me home today, I will have no regrets about how I spent yesterday. From my perspective, the Christian life is not about trying to make every day extraordinary. It’s about enjoying God’s many kindnesses in the ordinariness and redeeming every moment for His glory.
by Ryan Limbaugh