Recently I heard a radio personality use the phrase, “Embrace the suck.” “What the heck is that?,” I said to myself. Apparently, this relatively new (to me) and unusual phrase is a colloquialism originating in the military and is used to describe making the most out of very unpleasant situations, adopting a positive attitude towards the worst of circumstances, coming to terms with the harsh realities that soldiers encounter, and so on. It’s a motivational phrase of sorts employed to help someone push through the unbearable, to fortify oneself against quitting or giving up. Situations calling for a soldier to “embrace the suck” might be very long marches carrying a full load of military gear, experiencing fear and loss in combat situations, dealing with extreme heat, cold, or hunger, and facing harsh experiences that might force most folks to say, “No Mas,” to borrow another colloquial phrase.
It reminded me of a chapter of my life many years ago in which I had to make sense of a particularly irritating and demeaning part of my assigned duties as a “Dean of Students” at a well-to-do secondary school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Some of my students included the teenage heirs of big corporations such as Tyson Foods and Dillards. As the school’s parking lot was not adequate to accommodate all of the students’ parking needs, they would sometimes try to sneak into the church parking lot that was adjacent to the school, rather than make use of the school’s overflow parking lot that was further away and required a bit of walking to get to the school campus. As the Dean of Students, one of my least-enjoyable responsibilities was to patrol the church parking lot numerous time a day so as to nab the student drivers who were making illicit use of the church parking lot next door. I can still remember thinking to myself many times while carrying out my patrol duties, “Why in the world is it my job to patrol a parking lot? I have a college degree, I’m part of the school’s administrative team, there’s a hundred more important things I could be doing in my job instead of wasting my time checking for school stickers on car bumpers,” and so on. It was quite depressing for me, and prompted a lot of negative thoughts, some of which were not quite as tame as the ones I referenced above. It all seemed such a waste of my skills and talents, such as they are.
Yet, as is often the case among God’s people, this unpleasant aspect of my job eventually prompted me to start talking to God about it, and to try to make some biblical sense out of it. Somewhere along the way while making my parking lot rounds, I started thinking about Moses and how his life unfolded through time. As we all know, Moses was held in extremely high esteem among God’s people throughout history, and for good reason. He was providentially saved at birth and adopted into Paroah’s house; years later after fleeing Egypt for his life, he encountered the Living God at the burning bush, at which point he was commissioned to lead God’s enslaved people out of Egypt, in defiance of the most powerful nation on the earth at that time. He presided over the stunningly miraculous plagues that fell upon Egypt, and played a central role in the death-defying (for the Jews) experience of the original Passover, culminating in the dramatic escape from Egypt, standoff with Paroah’s army on the Shore of the Red Sea, passing through the waters held up by the mighty hand of the Living God, and finally witnessing the utter destruction of Pharoah’s army as the waters came crashing down upon them. Need I mention his receiving of God’s Law at Horeb, witnessing God’s glory on the holy mountain as He passed by, presiding over the building of the Tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant at God’s direction, and frequently doing personal business with God when His glory filled the tabernacle while everyone else stood at a distance? Moses, indeed, lived a uniquely spectacular and spiritually privileged life.
So, what does that have to do with patrolling parking lots? As I thought more about the life of Moses, I began to think about the long periods of time in which he seemed to be doing nothing of any real significance, considering his privileged upbringing and divinely-appointed mission. I was reminded that prior to his all-important task of leading God’s people out of Egypt, he spent 40 years doing the crucial work of . . . tending sheep (Acts 7:30). In the midst of my parking lot woes, that hit me like a ton of bricks. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but how demeaning it must have been for a man like Moses, who was raised as Pharoah’s son and enjoyed all the incredible privileges that came with it, to be tending sheep. And the sheep weren’t even his, as they belonged to his father-in-law, Jethro (Ex. 3:1). How humbling that must have been, how so much below him. What a terrible waste of his time and talent!
Yet, immediately following that “wasted” chapter of his life came all of the amazing and miraculous events related to the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai. Now he was doing something of significance, something spiritually meaningful, something worthy of who God had made him to be! And then less than a year later we see this spiritual giant engaged in the essential work of . . . 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, spinning his wheels but getting nowhere, playing spiritual baby-sitter to a most ungrateful and rebellious people. What must have been going through his mind? “What the heck am I doing wandering around the desert with these knuckleheads? This isn’t what I signed up for!” We can only imagine. I’m thinking that the Lord did not disclose this aspect of Moses’ job description during his commission at the burning bush. I’m thinking that it just presented itself as something that needed to be done in the unfolding of his otherwise spectacular ministry to Israel. Speaking purely from a human point of view, what an incredible waste! Moses participated in about 10 months of awesome spiritual usefulness, but was bracketed by 80 years of apparent mundane and meaningless activity.
That’s when it hit me – God is intimately and actively present in every moment of our lives, no matter how mundane and meaningless the circumstances we find ourselves in appear to be, infusing them with dignity and purpose as we go about the business God has called us to. Once I saw it in the life of Moses, I began to see it everywhere in scripture. What of any significance was going on in the life of Joseph as he languished in prison (for being falsely accused) for two years until being summoned by Pharoah to interpret a fearful dream? (Ex. 41:1) What meaningful events were going on in the life of Daniel, a captive of Babylonia, besides the amazing 15 days of his life we know about? What was going on in the life of Jesus during the 30 years prior to the inauguration of His redemptive mission for mankind at his baptism at the hand of John the Baptist? (Matt. 3:13-17). Was He doing anything of spiritual significance? Was He involved with anything commensurate with His supremely lofty position as the second person of the Trinity? We do not know much about this obscure part of His life, however, the little we do know is supremely important to us. As Jesus lived out His presumably mundane childhood moving into adulthood, He “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52). Something of great importance was going on in Jesus’ life during this silent period, something that significantly contributed to the success of His more well-known redemptive mission following His baptism. During all of this time, God was at work in His life, preparing Him for the relatively brief but spiritually crucial mission of the training of the twelve for apostolic ministry and atoning for the sins of the world.
The truth of the matter is that every aspect of our lives has spiritual significance, no matter how mundane or boring certain parts of our lives seem to be. Now I understand that everything God brings into our lives has spiritual significance, that every task we perform and every utterance we make can be done to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). So, to everyone who, like me, finds themselves involved with seemingly mundane and insignificant matters that fall far below our skills and accomplishments, I say, “Embrace the mundane,” because God is in it.
