by Margaret Manning on June 20, 2014

The question was asked and the room fell silent: “Does anyone ever feel they’ve lived up to their potential?” It was a loaded question, not only because it was asked in a group of persons struggling with vocation but also because the word “potential” is elusive in its definition. What does “potential” mean in a world that views achievement as athletic prowess, celebrity status, or economic success? If the exceptional is the guide for the achievement of one’s potential, how will those of us who live somewhere between the average and the ordinary ever feel we’ve arrived?

The inherent routine and mundane tasks that fill our days contribute to the struggle to understand our potential. How can one possibly feel substantial when one’s day-in, day-out existence is filled with the tedium of housework, paying bills, pulling weeds, and running endless errands? These tasks are not celebrated or sometimes even noticed. They are the daily details that comprise routine. In fact, for artists and bus drivers, homemakers and neurosurgeons, astronauts and cashiers, the days are often filled with repetitive motion, even if there are moments of great challenge or extraordinary success. It is no surprise then, with our societal standards and our routine-filled lives, that we wonder about our potential. Indeed, does much of what we do even matter when it feels so ordinary? Can the “ordinary” contribute to a sense of meeting potential, or does the preponderance of the ordinary simply serve as a perpetual reminder of a failure to thrive?

The so-called “simple lifestyle” movement attempts to locate potential in exactly the opposite ways of much of Western society. In this movement, simplicity unlocks the key to potential, and not acquisition, or achievement, or recognition. Clearing out what clutters and complicates makes room for finding potential in what is most basic and routine. In the Christian tradition, as well, there are many who see true potential and purpose unlocked by the radical call to simplicity. Some of the earliest Christians, who fled the luxury and security of Rome once Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, believed that one’s “holiness” potential could only be achieved within the radical austerity of a monastic cell. There in the cloistered walls where each and every day presented simple routine, repetitive tasks, and the regular rhythm of prayer and worship, perseverance with the ordinary became the path to one’s potential.

Brother Lawrence is one of the most well-known of this type of monastic. In The Practice of Prayer, Margaret Guenther writes, “Brother Lawrence, our patron of housekeeping, was a hero of the ordinary.”1 As one who found his potential in cultivating a profound awareness of God in the ordinary tasks of his day, Brother Lawrence was an “ordinary hero.” While he attended chapel with the other monks, his true sanctuary was amongst the pots and pans of the monastery kitchen. What we may not realize in the popularized retelling of his story is that he actually began by hating his ordinary work. His abbot wrote about him:

The same thing was true of his work in the kitchen, for which he had a naturally strong aversion; having accustomed himself to doing everything there for the love of God, and asking His grace to do his work, he found he had become quite proficient in the fifteen years he had worked in the kitchen.2

Quite proficient in the kitchen. Could it be that Brother Lawrence was able to fulfill his potential by washing dishes? Despite his strong aversion, he found purpose in the very midst of the most mundane and ordinary tasks of life. He fulfilled his potential by focusing on faithfulness. This is not faithfulness that triumphs over the desire to fulfill one’s potential. Indeed, as Guenther describes it, “Faithfulness rarely feels heroic; it feels much more like showing up and hanging in. It is a matter of going to our cell, whatever form that might take, and letting it teach us what it will.”3 Availing himself to consistent faithfulness yielded the blessing of both proficiency and presence—the presence of God—right there in midst of the costly monotony of dirty pots and pans.

My friend Sylvia is one of my ordinary heroes. Sylvia shows up and hangs in there as a paraplegic. She has not been able to use her legs since she was in high school. A horrible accident, when she was just a teenager, took away her ability to walk or to run, and left her without any discernible feeling in the lower half of her body. Her spine severed, the nerves do not receive the necessary information to register sensation or stimulation.

Prior to her accident, Sylvia was an aspiring athlete. Without the use of her legs, this aspiration would be put on hold, but not permanently. Though she is paralyzed in body, she is not paralyzed in spirit. And she eventually competed in several World Championships and in the Paralympic Games. Her determination to excel at world-class competitions, despite her injury, and her intention to live a full life has been an immense inspiration to me. She drives, works at least a forty hour week, and has traveled the world. She has mastered the art of navigating the world in a wheelchair. She has not defined her “potential” by her disability.

Fulfilling one’s potential has little to do with greatness. And yet, the heroism of the ordinary does not preempt the greatness that the world confers to those who have reached their potential with staggering and dramatic achievement; for even those who achieve greatness have faced the drama of routine and the tidal wave of tedium. But to assign the fulfillment of one’s potential solely to great acts and recognition is to miss the blessing that comes from faithful acts of devotion, often done routinely and heroically in the ordinary of our everyday. Perhaps it might be said of us, as it was of Brother Lawrence: “He was more united with God in his ordinary activities.”4

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

1Margaret Guenther, The Practice of Prayer (Boston: Cowley Press, 1998), 113.

2Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God, ed. John J. Delaney (New York: Image, 1977), 41.

3Guenther, 112.

4Brother Lawrence, 47.