Michael Kelley - Boring: Finding an Extraordinary God in an Ordinary Life

Boring, Digital Edition

Based on Print Edition

Copyright 2013 by Michael Kelley

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-4336-8135-6

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 248.84

Subject Heading: CHRISTIAN LIFE \ GOD \ SAUL, KING OF ISRAEL

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission.

Also used is the New International Version ( niv ), copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

To Gary, Eric, and Jeffrey KelleyThree men who show daily that there is no such thing as an ordinary life when you follow an extraordinary God.

When you come to a publisher with a book that you want to call Boring , it makes you very thankful for a partner in ministry that believes in you. I continue to remain grateful and indebted to the good and hard-working people at B&H Publishing. Selma, thank you for believing in me, and for continuing to give me opportunities to flesh out my heart on paper. Jed and Devin, thank you both for the constant encouragement and for helping me to be a better writer.

So many of the ideas expressed in this book are the result of conversations, sermons, and Sunday school classes Ive been a part of at Grace Community Church. It would be difficult for me to express how formative living in the midst of this community of faith has been. Im particularly grateful to Scott Patty and the team of elders who have shown me, through word and deed, how to find the great beauty, wonder, and significance right square in the middle of everyday life. It is my hope and prayer that we would continue together to do the next right thing.

And Janamy great love. My bride. The one who has constantly been my biggest cheerleader. Theres no one in the world with whom Id rather find the joy, excitement, and satisfaction of life in Jesus Christ.

Once upon a time, there was an ordinary man. Every day, his alarm clock went off. On good days, he would reach over, turn off the alarm, get up, and go to the gym. On the other days, he would hit the snooze button. Upon returning from the YMCA (or waking up after another hour), this man would take a shower and put on a collared shirt and khaki pants.

He would then hear the scurrying of little feet upstairs, and would trace the sound until it eventually made its way down the stairs revealing three young children hungry for breakfast. The man and his wife would go upstairs and get out bowls, milk, and cereal. The family would eat and then clean up the dishes. Then he would get in his car and begin the commute to work. When he got to work, just when he thought this was going to be an ordinary day in his ordinary life...

It was. He spent the next eight hours sitting in front of his computer. Answering e-mails. Taking phone calls. Checking a news website occasionally. Then he got in his car and went home. When he pulled in, sure that he knew exactly what was going to happen when he opened the back door...

He was right again. He hugged and played with all the kids. He kissed his wife. They had dinner. They watched TV. They went to bed.

Yawn.

What did you expect? International intrigue? A call from the president? A natural disaster, or a chance to be a hero? Not here. Not in that day. Not in my life.

Probably not in yours either.

This is what most of my days look like. Oh sure, there is the occasional interruption in the routine and some vacations peppered in there, but by and large, its a fairly regular way to live. A fairly regular way to live for a fairly regular guy.

Most of us are just thatregular. Ordinary. Boring. Most of our lives are spent doing regular, ordinary, boring kinds of things. Changing diapers. Going to work. Reading books. Playing with kids. Relating to our spouses. Paying bills.

Ive never met a president. Or saved a child from a burning building. Or climbed Everest. I dont run in powerful circles or tweet nuggets of wisdom adored by millions. My office walls dont have pictures with me and the Queen of England or medals from my wins at the Olympic Games. Perhaps if I were an international man of mystery, Id look over and see a picture of me standing next to a world leader at that ceremony when I was awarded some token for my bravery. Then I could turn and see another wall full of mementos and trinkets collected from my adventures. Instead Im looking at four family pictures, a calendar, and a particularly fierce-looking rendering of a black and yellow fire-breathing dragon laying waste to a castle.

Ah, parenthood.

A regular life isnt bad, necessarily. In fact, a certain kind of bliss accompanies the normal life. There arent a lot of surprises, and for a guy who has a to-do list for every day (with the last item on that list being Make tomorrows list), a lack of surprises can be very comforting. What is more, an ordinary life actually affords an opportunity to love things like pictures from an eight-year-old of dragons and castles. In an ordinary life, your existence becomes papered with moments like these.

And yet...

And yet there are those days that just feel boring. The routine becomes monotony, and you find yourself refreshing your e-mail over and over again, waiting for somethinganythingto break up the ticking of the clock. You feel something inside of you, something that appreciates the life you have, but at the same time wonders if theres something more. Something that youre missing. I feel that way sometimes.

Searching for Significance

The truth is that we will all spend 90 percent of our time here on earth just doing life. Just being ordinary. If this were a self-help book, I might follow that realistic, slightly de-motivating statement up with something like: Break out of the ordinary. Pursue your bliss. Go skydiving. Do something important. Carpe diem . The same motivation, in Christian terms, might read: Gods will is that you have a life of adventure. Get out there and make an eternal difference. Do something big for God.

All of those statements are true in a sense; all of them can be appropriate. What those statements communicate is that we should be focused on Jesus and expanding His kingdom. That should be our priority. Those statements challenge us to recognize that we only have a limited time here on earth, so we need to make sure we spend our time doing things that matter. However, implicit in an exhortation like do something big for God is the notion that we are currently not doing stuff that matters, and we have to abandon that insignificant stuff to break out of the rutchase the dream... be the man... overcome obscurity... all that stuff.

Chasing dreams isnt the problem. Neither is maximizing what you have to make a difference in the world for the sake of Christ. The problem is in our definition of significance.

People tend to believe that the pathway to significance is paved with the big, the showy, and the grand. The people who are most often lauded as influential are the ones doing the big, impressive things with their lives. Consequently, those same people cannot involve themselves in these mundane details of life. Indeed, the mundane details are like anchors that weigh a person down from the bigger and the better. So moving toward a life that matters involves moving past the details that dont.