With each step down the concourse, an icy sword plunged down my back and into each leg. I bit my lip and tried to hide both the pain and the embarrassment of having my petite wife carry our bags to the next gate. “I guess I should have been more careful picking up that suitcase full of books,” I mumbled as Crystal looked on sympathetically.

As we sat down at the gate and my hope for finding a comfortable arrangement of my limbs ran thin, Crystal went off for a cup of water while I dug around for some ibuprofen. As I waited and wondered what the upcoming three hour flight would be like, I heard myself praying, “Please Lord, take away the pain.” When she returned and the two brown pills had been swallowed, we distracted ourselves with a movie while waiting to board. As our row number was called, Crystal asked me how I felt and I realized, “Wow…no pain.”

While settling into our airliner seats, I found myself facing a spiritual dilemma: should I thank God for my comfort or simply chalk it up to the medication? I posed the question to Crystal and she replied, “Maybe God used the ibuprofen.”

Huh.

One of the great stumbling blocks for modern Christians is the dividing of everything into two disconnected piles: the “God stuff” (the spiritual) and the “ordinary stuff” (the secular). On Sunday we go to church (God stuff); each night we pray (God stuff); Tuesday night is Bible study (God stuff). On Monday morning we go to work (ordinary stuff); in the evening we do the dishes (ordinary stuff); and Saturday evening we have dinner with friends (ordinary stuff). So was my cured back a miracle (God stuff) or the effects of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (ordinary stuff)? Crystal was suggesting that it could be both.

This dualistic error that I had fallen into catches us on all sides. Its effects run deep, because if we buy into it then our next step is often to find ways to increase the “God stuff” in our lives by reducing the “ordinary stuff.” We have seen this many times both in ourselves and in others. Crystal is a medical student, and has seen Christian classmates decide that “real Christians” should neglect their studies in order to attend more Christian meetings. But maybe God is interested in his children being excellent doctors, too. I work in high technology and have seen a friend give up a software management career in order to do the “more holy” work of teaching at a Christian high school, only to discover that he is particularly gifted to represent God in the business world.

Dualism can also have the strange effect of convincing us that God has no interest in the “ordinary stuff.” We see our friends stealing hospital scrubs and mp3 songs off of the internet. We catch ourselves posturing for recognition and praise at the expense of others and choosing careers based on the creature comforts they produce. Such choices are easily rationalized when they are seen as not part of the “God stuff.”

A biblical worldview accepts no such dualism. From the beginning, God’s mandate to his creatures was for farming and family – tasks that are both “ordinary” and very much of interest to God. The Mosaic laws guide both the temple courts and the law courts. In fact, Zechariah prophesies that if Israel holds honest law courts, the Gentiles will be so amazed that they will come to search out God (Zech 8:16-23). Of course, God cares deeply about our spiritual lives, but not to the exclusion of our physical lives. The dichotomy is simply false. Jesus has given us the Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20) to evangelize the world. But we need to recognize that the Apostle Paul’s picture of living out our response to the Good News has much more to do with living our ordinary lives honorably (Eph 4:1-3) than with exciting spiritual heroics. We must always remember that serving God faithfully by fulfilling the little tasks He has given us, is more important than impressing our neighbors.

So what did I learn from my parable of the pill, my ordinary drug store answer to prayer? Maybe countless ordinary people rendered service to God through that little pill. God’s servants did ordinary work in medical labs, chemical factories, packaging and advertising design, shuttling pallets on forklifts, stocking store shelves, and ringing up sales. All of those tasks led to the miracle of an unworthy servant saying a prayer of thanks to God on an airplane.

We Christians are not always called to be heroic, but we are called to a life of extraordinary faithfulness in both ordinary and extraordinary situations. It might just take a more mature faith and more biblically-shaped heart to be humble enough to solemnize the routine.

For years I struggled with the value and purpose of my technological work. I think I misunderstood God’s ways when I saw no value in improving data storage systems or testing mouse pointers. As Luther pointed out, ordinary shepherds saw the heavenly host and worshipped the baby Jesus, and then returned to their ordinary sheep. If this return to normal life is a disappointment, maybe we need a biblical worldview that sees how extraordinary it is when ordinary shepherds are “glorifying and praising God” (Luke 2:20).

Crystal goes to the hospital each day like hundreds of non-Christian doctors. They all seek to heal their patients, but somehow Crystal’s love for her Lord, and resulting genuine care for her patients makes a world of difference. Sometimes it means praying with a patient or some other overtly Christian action. But most of the time it means an often imperceptible shift in her values. Sometimes it means not ridiculing an uneducated patient in the privacy of the elevator. Sometimes it means an understanding look that expresses her view that people are more than failing bodies. Sometimes it means seeing her own brokenness in someone’s deformed body and so not classifying that one as expendable.

This holistic biblical worldview is more difficult to comprehend than the clear-cut dualistic life. A missionary’s list of conversions seems so much more impressive than a grocery clerk’s list of stocked shelves. But maybe it only looks more impressive when we lack eyes to see God’s whole world and our hearts are hardened against valuing all that God values. “Maybe God used the ibuprofen.” And maybe he answers countless prayers through the most ordinary activities. A biblical worldview believes that he does, and seeks to live accordingly.