www.TimothyReport.com
Coloring The Routine
The Fall 2001 edition of Proclaim! included a little story about a hand surgeon who specializes in reattaching fingers that have been partially or completely severed in accidents. When he enters the operating room, he knows he will be squinting into a microscope for six to eight hours, sorting out and stitching together the snarl of nerves, tendons, and blood vessels finer than human hairs. A single mistake, and the patient may permanently lose moment or sensation.
Once the surgeon received an emergency call at three in the morning and was really not looking forward to undertaking such a tedious procedure at that time of the morning. To add incentive and help him focus, he decided to dedicate that surgery to his father who had recently died. For the next several hours, he imagined his father standing beside him, encouraging him with a hand on his shoulder.
His little technique worked so well that he began dedicating his surgeries to other people he knew, even waking them up to tell them so!
Then one day he realized that as a Christian, he should offer his life to God in the same way. All the little routine things of his day--answering phone calls, dealing with staff, seeing patients, scheduling surgeries--remained the same, but somehow they were different. The task of living a life for God now began to overshadow his days, and he soon began to treat others with more respect and care.
I wonder if we might do the same? We may not be hand surgeons, but we each have tasks and duties for which we are responsible. There are others who depend on us. Wouldn't it be marvelous if we could "dedicate" each day to the Lord, imagining Him standing beside us with a hand on our shoulders, watching us, guiding us, counseling us, walking with us?
If we would do that, I believe we would find that even the simplest, most routine things in our lives would become colored with a holy sense of His presence with us.
--Rocky Henriques, www.timothyreport.com
