Every morning I wake up and look out the window. Every day, it’s the same – loud buses, honking cars, raging motorcycles, the bright morning sun, pedestrians waiting to cross the busy street. Every week is the same too – church on Sundays, tutoring 5-8 every week day, bible studies on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Life can really feel like a hamster wheel – but it’s actually worse because we’re on a hamster wheel that is raging towards the cliff of death. It’s all quite depressing to think about, how routinely we live only to die at the end. It makes me realize why people itch endlessly for the newest thing. You can have a ton of clothes but you still need new ones; you can have the nicest phone and still want the latest one; you can eat a lot of good food, but still feel hungrier for better quality foods. It never ends. Why? Because I believe God made us to be renewed, and unless we’re getting it from him, we’re gonna look for it elsewhere. 

So, yes, life can feel so mundane and routine and depressing. That is, without the living word of God. The key word here is living. I can religiously read the bible, do my devotions, sing praise songs, and attend church meetings and still feel very very routined. And sometimes it does. But the moment I realize that the word is living, the Spirit is real in me, and he guides me to literally eat of the word, I find a newness there that is totally apart from anything in the world. This apartness is holiness. The word of God is holy, ever holy, holy, holy and so it refreshes our tired souls in this mundane, meaningless existence. It always amazes me how I can read the same passage again, the first time feeling absolutely nothing, but the second time – when I’m humbled and hungry for God, when I’ve admitted defeat and dissatisfaction in this world – I find endless treasures in every verse. I taste the goodness of the word of God and my soul’s craving is satisfied. I become alive. 

2 Corinthians 3 talks about the ministry of Jesus Christ which brings righteousness. When Moses went up on the mountain and communed with God, his face was always radiant but it was a passing radiance that depended on the old covenant. But now in Jesus, who is the living word, we have access to God moment-by-moment and eternal and so we can behold the glory of God constantly. The only thing we have to do is to turn to the Lord. That is the fight. Turn away from that thing and back to God – away from our phone, away from social media, away from pleasure simply in food or fashion, away from career, and money talk, and body image and anything else of this world, and to the glorious, holy face of Jesus Christ. He is ever new, and he is the only one who truly renews. With Christ Jesus, the most mundane of lives and of days can truly be glorious and joyful. In no matter situation we are in, let us experience and then shine the radiance of God’s glory through Christ who lives in us by his living word. May we be ever reformed, transformed, as we gaze upon the glory of his holy face.

“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” 2 Corinthians 3: 18