“How are you, Tam?”, a friend asks.
“I’m okay!” I replied.
This is me since 3 weeks ago. I hate that life is just okay. Life isn't filled with big and grand things; I am living in the daily, mundane routines. Taking the MRT, working out after work, and going to church on Sundays. My discontentment and boredom grew. In turn, my faith became rather dull and empty. All was routine.
“Isn’t there more to life?” My eyes missed God’s daily grace and provision for me.
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There’s this longing to go on a mission trip to serve the poor, to raise my voice against injustices, and to travel the world God made. But this is a season of hiddenness.
It is easy to see God’s beauty when you’re at Santa Monica pier of the skyscraper of Manhattan. It is easy when God gives you new responsibilities or align international charity projects for you to take on.
It is easy to see God’s power on display when you are able to speak on public to a large gathering or when your life-long prayers are answered in the most timely manner.
But it’s harder to see God’s beauty late in the afternoon, in the thousand of minutes in the middle of my days that don’t seem worth of photographing or sharing with others.
Yes, our eyes need training to see wonder in the middle minutes, the sitting in traffic, and the waiting in line.
How do we see God in the mundane?
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The early monks have a name for this sin.
Acedia, or the noonday demon, is best translated as “impatience with routine,” “boredom,” “listlessness”… a desire for a shortcut. Athletes experience acedia when they’ve gone through drills again and again.
It is a sin of living a life wherein we’re constantly “alone together”—where being alone and being silent are uncomfortable—where we constantly dream of the life we don’t have. Those ancient monks felt acedia when they’re tempted to leave the discomfort of their spiritual calling in the monasteries. We, modern monks, feel it when we put off the tasks we’ve been given to check-in on social media, looking longingly at the lives we wish we had.
It tempts you to sleep or disengage. It tempts you to fill your life with noise—whether that’s TV, or social media, It’s the opposite of mindful fulfilling of your responsibility, come what may. It leads to restlessness and instability. It distracts us from being a responsible and loving steward before God, worthy of the work God calls us to in faith and work.
“I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” - Blaise Pascal
There are lessons to learn about staying the course, resisting the temptation to sleep off our boredom and despair, and lean in to our present situation: It is as an act of long obedience toward God and faithfulness and loyalty to the people around us.
As one prone to this demon myself, here are some of the ancient practices to conquer:
Grief
The noonday demon threatens to take away your ability to grieve about things that matter: your own actions and character, the suffering & weakness of your neighbors. Weeping/grieving can be a means to retain your sense of purpose in spiritual formation.
Work
Simply endure. Endurance to perform one’s tasks, menial though they might seem, gives you a pattern for living. We do the homework, we send that email, and we change that 7th diaper today because God is not just there for us on Sunday mornings. God is part of our lives, 24/7.
Invest or inspire love in your work
When you invest or inspire, you take them as little bursts of delight. You sing into them. You pray into them. You weave a basket full of psalms, and then you can offer a burnt sacrifice of your work to the one who gave it to you.
Invest into your tasks your care, and thereby your love, and thereby find a reason for your work. It’s yours, given to you by God.
Once you’ve contended with acedia, you experience a deep peace that is deeper than almost anything else you’ll ever find. Because you’ve come through that really bad time of thinking everything as meaningless. Nothing matters at all, and then you pull through.
The opposite of acedia is love, that you’re able to love in a really, really deep way.
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For many weeks, I abhor this mundane, hidden season—feeling unseen, unproductive, and unfulfilled. A friend, Sonia advised me, “ Tam, learn to deal with the feeling of being 'unsatisfied'. I think it is precisely because you feel so, God is giving this to you. What can be seen as productive is often unquantifiable in God’s kingdom. Just like Moses, his preparation time was more than his ‘action time’."
She was right.
The hidden season invites us to slow down, to notice the beauty too often blurred by hurry, to cultivate the same wonder as a toddler watching butterflies in the garden.
And so God hides us. He takes us into a place where the opinions of others fail us. That’s where he speaks to us. and the longing that comes from being hidden makes us more aware of our brokenness, more receptive to his healing than we’d ever be in the light of the world’s applause.
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Lord, help me to battle the noonday demon. Remind me to walk in the path of long obedience. To fight the familiarity that breeds contempt. To see your wonders in my daily mundane life. For it is in the mundane, that you trains us to be able to cherish you deeper. As a deer pants for waters, so my souls pants for you. So help me God, breathe on my weakness. For all I have is yours to use. Make my whole life your upperroom.
X,
Tam
It started with God first asking, "Do you want it?" He asked if I wanted what He has for me. Only when I was ready to say ‘Yes’, the next question He asked , "Do you now see what I want you to have?" And then He asked me "Do you now believe I can give this to you?