Ordinary Chores, Extraordinary Love: Imaging God’s Care for Us
There’s more to chores than meets the eye.
This lesson was driven home to me with force one week when my wife was out of town, and I assumed full responsibility for keeping our three children intact and alive, clean and on schedule. I knew already that there would be the constant demands of jobs that need doing—right now—and the jobs that need to be started so they can be finished on time— and, Oh, did I remember to preheat the oven for dinner?
While my wife was away, I began to understand in a new way that a lot of the work—and the burden—of keeping a home running smoothly is mental. It’s not just about doing the laundry; it’s about making sure the right clothes are ready and dry before the kids need to wear them. It’s not just about making dinner; it’s about making sure we also have everything needed for tomorrow’s breakfast. And it’s about a dozen other similarly time-sensitive tasks colliding simultaneously. I’m used to doing chores around the house, but I wasn’t used to bearing the full weight of this mental burden that my wife has quietly carried for years. Even with her directions and preparations, and with the alarms set on my phone, I struggled to keep up with all of it. Keeping a home and family running smoothly is no joke.
The weight of all of this mental and physical labor is significant. The sheer volume of decisions—and the large amount of time spent on tasks—makes it hard to feel like anything is left for other “bigger,” “more important” opportunities. The never-ending to-do list never stops demanding precious, limited time and energy for jobs that will just need to be done all over again tomorrow. Sometimes, life can feel like it’s little more than one long string of repetitive chores and necessities. Didn’t God make us for bigger things?
Have you ever noticed that God seems to like repetition? There’s a spot near our house that blooms every year with daffodils—not one or two or six dozen but hundreds and thousands of them. All the same. In Matthew 6, Jesus said that God is the one who clothes the flowers of the field. All of them. He also said that God feeds the birds of the air, but have you seen how many birds there are? And God has been feeding them for the entire span of history. That’s a lot of birds. That’s a lot of food. That’s a lot of repetitive tasks that God has been doing every day for longer than we can even imagine.
And it’s not just the birds—Jesus said that God does chores for his children too. He told us specifically to ask God to “give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). This sounds like what a lot of mothers do every day—but Jesus tells us that God does it too. He gives his children daily bread. Do you know what this means? It means that the King of heaven is not above doing repetitive, daily work to provide for his children.
If God himself works every single day in billions of small, repetitive ways to care for his creation and his children, then maybe our mundane to-do lists are more important than we realize. Our God often calls himself a Good Shepherd who cares for his people like a flock.[1] He leads them, protects them, and provides for their needs. He seeks those who wander and carries them home. He binds up the injured.[2] He makes them lie down in green pastures.[3] The work of a shepherd is hard, and it is not glamorous. It is repetitive and ordinary—mostly food and water and long hours and attentiveness to needs. But God doesn’t approach these tasks as boxes to tick as quickly as possible so that he can move on to bigger and better things. Throughout the Bible, we see that our God of power and might and miracles does most of his work in our lives and in our world through ordinary means. He doesn’t see small, repetitive chores as too insignificant for his time, too unimportant for his thoughts, or too demeaning for his strength.
There’s more to chores than meets the eye.
They are not just physical and mental exercises in meeting necessities. They are not just the jobs we must do as quickly as possible so that we can move on to more significant things. These simple tasks are some of the primary ways that God makes his world and his people grow, slowly and quietly and faithfully, and they can also be a daily reflection of his own love, care, and provision. The next time we’re doing chores (which will probably be soon), we can remember that God does them too. He never tires of caring for his world and his children in a multitude of tiny, daily, ordinary provisions. When we do the same for our world, or for our children, we reflect the work and provision and faithful love of our Maker and Savior. There’s nothing insignificant about that.
[1] John 10
[2] Ezekiel 34
[3] Psalm 23
