It’s time to clean again.

    As long as you sleep peacefully, my sweet babe, I’ll be able to sail through my work, and a sparkling clean house will be my reward.

    A few months from now you won’t sleep as much, but spend your wakeful time leaving a trail of toys behind you. Books and magazines will be pulled from shelves in your search for who knows what. And added to my weekly tasks of cleaning will be hourly tasks of picking up and putting away.

    I hope I’ll be able to do it cheerfully. I used to resent and dislike scrubbing toilets, scouring showers and tubs, dusting baseboards and cleaning cupboards.

    “Well,” John says, “I wash the cars, sweep the garage, mow the lawn, and tackle the always-flourishing, indestructible weeds — and do repairs around the house. That gets to be routine too.”

    We tried exchanging jobs, but that only worked for a day or two.

    I guess deep down I used to dream of the day when maybe — just maybe our combined incomes would be enough to pay someone to do all these tedious, repetitive chores that sometimes try me.

Routine tasks are what keep us in touch with reality, with the basic needs of life...

    But then one day we agreed that routine tasks are what keep us in touch with reality, with the basic needs of life: food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and comfort. We can live without the cultural enjoyments and the luxuries of our affluent Western civilization, but we can’t live without farmers, homemakers, builders, and loving neighbors. We must remember this.

    Now I clean my house with a song and a dance, And I weed my garden without a guilty feeling that I should be doing something more worthwhile. John and I clean the garage together and thank the Lord for everyday dusty, ho-hum, repetitive tasks that keep us in touch with life as it really is.

    This enhances our respect for those who spend all their hours providing for the rest of humanity: food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health care, and comfort.

    The Lord Jesus spent His life that way.

    I will too.

    Joyfully.

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Excerpted from: Devotions for a New Mother by Mildred Tengbom. Copyright © 1977, 1983, 2002, Mildred Tengbom. ISBN 0764225987. Published by Bethany House Publishers. Used by permission. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.

Title: "Doing the Mundane Tasks With Joy"
Author: Mildred Tengbom
Publication Date: May 10, 2002

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