Today is Thursday. It isn’t the first day of the week, when we still wish it was the weekend and we have to get ourselves ready to work hard for a few days. It isn’t Wednesday, the midpoint of the week, when we wait to turn the corner and race to the finish line to the weekend. It isn’t Friday, when we are looking forward to a couple of days off. It isn’t Saturday, when we get to sleep in and do whatever we want. It’s Thursday. It’s nothing really remarkable in the week.
Today isn’t a holiday. There isn’t anything we are commemorating. There isn’t some cultural hero we are celebrating. There isn’t a historical even to memorialize. It’s just Thursday.
I was thinking this morning about all that I have to do today. I have work stops to make that are altogether pretty standard, except for one at the end of the day, to meet with a person I have met with before, to go back over the same thing we have been over several times, to navigate conversation with someone who is a little condescending to me, who wants to tell me all the reasons why I don’t understand what he is asking. The challenge is that I do understand, he just doesn’t like what I have to tell him. So we will go round and round again.
This isn’t anything grand or life-altering. It isn’t a medical procedure or a scientific discovery. It’s part of the daily grind, no different than a teacher grading a paper, a law clerk filing a motion, a carpenter hammering a nail, or a cook preparing the daily special.
It’s Thursday.
When we Christians are faced with adversity, we reach out to Christ for help. We pray for strength to help us overcome difficulty. We pray for guidance when we have tough decision making. We pray for peace when our souls are in turmoil. And through Scripture, we are taught than in all of these things, God is with us. When we walk through fire or through flood, we trust in God’s provision, that he will walk with us and never leave us.
But what about on Thursdays? What about the day-to-day mundanity of the work week? When we are signing orders, making and taking phone calls, scheduling appointments? Or when we are tired—not from having gone through Hell, but from having gone through Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday? What about when we are a little hungry, a little sleep-deprived, have a little bit of a headache, and just don’t feel like having that last conversation at the end of the day?
Perhaps then, as much as any other time, we need to remember that God is with us. We tend to think of God in cosmic terms. God is the God of glory and power and redemption and salvation, of course. But he is also the God of the mundane, the ordinary, the usual. He is that God of detail as much as he is the God of grandeur. Christ was tempted, he suffered, he grieved, yes. But in Christ, we have God on the ground. He had parents, brothers and sisters, friends. He interacted with people who aggravated him. He had a trade, a job for his livelihood. Jesus had Thursdays.
Today I prayed for God to guide me through the monotony. I don’t suspect that today will be too dissimilar from any day I have had this week. But I am a little worn out. The weather is cooler, the sky is a little overcast, and like many of you, I’d have much rather stayed home with some coffee and just taken it easy. But today is Thursday. It’s a day of work, of doing life in all its regularity.
And for that reason, it occurs to me that I need God just as much on Thursdays as I have in times when everything around me seemed to be coming apart. And what’t better, is that God is with me today, on Thursday. While I am in the car on the way to appointments, while I am on the phone with tedious people, while I am writing emails and finishing work orders, God is with me.
Remember that Christ cares about the in-between spaces. He cares about the drudgery. He cares about us on Thursdays because he cares about us at every other time in our lives. And he has walked that boring stroll himself. That makes this next day ahead a little bit better.
So have a good Thursday, y’all.
-Jem.
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