“The God of the Mundane: Reflections on Ordinary Life for Ordinary People”
By Matthew B. Redmond
Re-Published by Cruciform Press, 2021.
Equally convicting and encouraging.
I will be honest, I did not go into this book expecting too much. I am generally drawn to titles like “Radical,” “Crazy Love,” “Don’t Waste Your Life,” etc. Books that I expect are going to call me to some new and gnarly heights. Not ones that sound like they are aimed at comforting me in my normality. Well, 1) the aim of this book was definitely not to comfort me in my normality, and 2) this was truly the most radical book I have read in a long time.
I can’t remember the last time I finished a book and felt so laid bare, and yet so stoked at the same time. “The God of the Mundane” exposed so much of the unhealthy and ungodly ambition that has lived in me for so long. It also stirred up in me a new excitement for all that God has done and can do through the ordinary activities of my life and through all of the mundanity of my days.
The book is quite perfectly titled. Redmond’s mission in this book is, as the title suggests, is to talk about the God of the Mundane; to talk about how God is concerned with, involved with, and working in the things that take up most of our time on earth. He is not only involved with extraordinary accomplishments, as our ambitions often suggest, but He is also the God of the the diaper changes, the lawn mowings, the friend hangouts, the meal preps and the long drives. He is present and active in the big stuff, and He is right there in the little stuff.
This simple truth was so unbelievably reassuring to me. My sights are most often set on the crazy and the radical. So much so, that at times I forget that God even cares of about the quieter parts of my life, much less is active in them!
All this to say, I loved this book. I will repeatedly read this book. And I highly recommend this book.
My guess is that most of us get to focused at times on the radical and forget how much God cares about the mundane. Because of that, I think this this book will resonate will almost every Christian. And since its only 130 pages, it is accessible to almost every Christian too.
I seem to keep recommending every book I review lately, but I just keep reading books that are worth recommending. This is another one.