An Ordinary Offering

Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering.
~ Romans 12:1 (Msg)

It's easy to give our big offerings and life situations to God.

Look, Lord, I tithed!

Check this out, God, I'm going on a missions trip.

I place this life or death situation in your hands, Lord, because it's out of my control.

But the regular, ordinary, boring day-to-day stuff... That's not so easy.

Lord, I will scrub the toilet cheerfully because it's the work You've called me to today.

Father, I trust You with my child's poor grades.

I will have coffee with my neighbour as a way of giving You worship, God.

That's a little more weird, isn't it? Yet I'm convinced that this is exactly what Paul is referring to in Romans. The everyday offering.

Put into action, what might an everyday offering look like?

For me, I think it means that I need to pause and do an attitude check. Am I engaging in an activity with joy, as an act of service for God and others? Or am I moving ahead with an attitude of obligation?

It applies not only to my actual "service" things (such as volunteering with women's ministry and the Logos Society), but my day-to-day "duties" like cooking dinner, helping the kids fill their juice cups, dealing with the news that my husband has to work late...

Practically speaking, what does this verse mean to you?