As one who spends a fair bit of time sitting in airports, I have the opportunity to people watch. There are the elite travelers who emerge from airline lounges with their power suits and designer cases, and then there are those who are traveling for leisure, souvenirs and gifts in tow. I love seeing the variety of clothing styles depending on what region I am in, and listening in on conversations betrays regional dialects and phrases. Business deals are made or broken, discussions over the day’s events all done in the parlance of the place.

More often than not, my attention is drawn to those who sit alone, as I do. In the smaller, regional airports I see the elderly gentleman in the wheelchair, alone. I look at the gate agent as she texts on her phone after yet another flight delay, hoping to hide from the ire of the passengers who needed to arrive at their destination hours ago. There is the single mother trying to corral her children, the slouched, sad looking twenty-something seemingly without much future or hope. There we all sit waiting. Wondering. Is there anything more than this?

The inherent routine, mundane tasks and waiting for whatever is next on the agenda can fill the days with a deepening ennui and a longing for something greater—something like a sense of finding and fulfilling one’s potential. As one who sits anonymously in airports watching and waiting, what does “potential” even mean? In a world that views achievement as athletic prowess, celebrity status, or economic success, how can one ever feel she has reached her potential? 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?

Most of us occupy an existence often filled with the mundane or the banal. Never ending housework, constant bills, and running endless errands do not make one feel substantial. These are the daily details that make up often dulling routines. Indeed for artists and bus drivers, homemakers and neurosurgeons, astronauts and cashiers repetitive motion is more the norm than moments of great challenge or extraordinary success. It is no wonder then, with societal standards and routine-filled lives that most wonder about potential.

In those moments of quiet reflection while sitting in airports, I often wonder how many of those sitting around me wonder if their lives matter when they feel so ordinary. Does the “ordinary” contribute to our sense of meeting our potential, or does it’s predominance in our lives simply serve as a perpetual reminder of a failure to thrive?

The “simple lifestyle” movement attempts to locate potential in exactly the opposite ways of many in society. In this movement, simplicity unlocks the key to potential, and not acquisition, or achievement, or recognition. Instead, through clearing out what clutters and complicates room is made for finding potential in what is most basic and routine. In the Christian tradition, as well, there are many who believe that one’s potential and one’s purpose would only be found in the radical call of 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 her book called The Practice of Prayer, Margaret Guenther writes that “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 radically re-defines reaching one’s potential. While he attended chapel with the other monks, his created his own sanctuary washing the pots and pans in the monastery kitchen. What we may not realize in the popularized retelling of his story is that he too struggled with the ordinary and mundane nature of his 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. 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 monotony of dirty pots and pans.

Fulfilling one’s potential has little to do with greatness. And yet, the heroism of the ordinary does not preempt “greatness” that our world confers to those who have reached their potential with staggering and dramatic achievement; for even those who achieve greatness have faced the doldrums of routine and 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.”

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

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

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

(3) Margaret Guenther, The Practice of Prayer (Boston: Cowley Press, 1998), 112.

(4) Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God, ed. John J. Delaney (New York: Image, 1977), 47.