Quotidian means "Every Day"

"Quotidian" means everyday, ordinary, routine acts or places. It doesn't get more quotidian than a bathroom...or a kitchen....or the bed in which we sleep. Interestingly, those are the places buyers look first, when considering a new home. It may be that only in real estate exchanges, do we humans stop to admit the fact that the quotidian rules. It is the most vital thing. Regardless of how high-powered our career may be, or how well-known we may (or may not) be, it is the every day things that are the most important to us, deep down. The leader of the free world takes a shower, eats a snack, and crawls exhausted into a bed at night. Daily.

And so to spend time maintaining these areas of our life is not wasted time. But the work is menial. "Menial" is yet another casualty of our declining understanding of the English language. It did not, originally, mean "demeaning". It comes from Latin, and at its root means "to remain" or "to dwell in a household".

Certain things you gotta do simply because you are alive and taking up space on this earth. You have to do them every day. The Word of God is full of admonishments to "dwell in the land, and cultivate faithfulness"....to "occupy til I come"...to buy houses, lands, have children, and plant gardens.

Menial work. Mine is a remaining, dwelling, occupying occupation.

So I cleaned my bathroom yesterday, from top to bottom. It is what I must do in order that my family might dwell and remain. It was satisfying, grounding work - reminding me, as always, that I am earthly and incarnational. Christ in me has never been too spiritual to scrub a floor or a fixture.

In fact, when I accept and enjoy the menial tasks that are part-and-parcel of my womanhood, Christ is formed even more clearly in me.

"So I will always praise Thy name, and day after day fulfill my vows." Ps. 61:9

Day after day after day. Every day, I cook and I clean and I tidy and straighten and fold and smooth and wash and wipe and weed and water and sweep and dust. By giving birth, I bound myself to tend life, to do it as beautifully as I can, to the best of my ability. It was an unspoken vow I made to God, motherhood was, but every bit as real as if I'd signed in blood.

Because my work fulfills those vows, the Lord receives my work as worship, when it is offered with a full and glad heart, to Him.