There are many things I love about being an educator: the early mornings, the long hours, the late nights grading papers, the endless emails asking for special permission for anything, etc.

[I would like to take this time to ask prayer for my abundance of sarcasm. It’s really getting out of hand. Amen.]

In all sincerity, I really do love being an educator. And I really love working with elementary. Something about their lack of a filter makes for pretty hilarious stories. Like the time one of my third graders started praying for the food. Problem was, it was the end of the day, not lunchtime. When I corrected him, he seamlessly continued, “Lord, I pray our food doesn’t backfire.” Not only was that gross, but I am here to tell you that the Lord did not answer that prayer.

Or what about the time I asked the students to draw a picture of their dad? One little boy excitedly ran to me and said, “I’m going to draw a picture of my mom and dad wrestling!” I seriously considered buying a lock for their bedroom door and sending it home with that child. Poor kid will probably be traumatized when he figures out what wrestling really is.

Or what about the time I was student teaching in kindergarten? We had just sat down on the carpet for Math time when one student sitting in front of me suddenly and unexpectedly released some – how shall I say it – pressure. I managed to keep a straight face and ignore it until the girl next to him looked over at him and exclaimed with a look of disgust on her face, “EWWW! THAT WAS A WET ONE!” So was the snot coming out of my nose because I could no longer control myself.

Kids are funny. They are messy, they are loud, they are clingy, and sometimes they are unavoidably obnoxious. But they are funny. And seeing their faces light up when they finally understand a concept, or watching them refuse to give up on a hard assignment has kept me in the field of education. It has kept me invested in their educational and spiritual lives at Cornerstone.

But if we’re completely honest, I think everyone of us sitting here would admit that sometimes, it gets old. It can feel routine. It can be hard to get ourselves going when we don’t see the immediate fruit of our very intensive and back-breaking labor.

On the days where I’m frustrated with myself, or worse, feeling as though my contributions don’t matter to anyone for anything, I’ve learned to go to one verse. That verse is 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 (NLT):

“Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not Christians will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others.”

Sometimes God just punches me in the gut, ya know?

My job is not always exciting. I’m not always laughing with my students. Sometimes the day consists of me watching the clock for my next break or completely passing out the second I get home. Often times I’ve gone to bed without eating dinner – not because of a lack of food, but because I had absolutely no energy to get up and cook myself something (and by cook, I mean drive to the nearest Chick-Fil-A).  

But here’s the thing – I have my job because God provided it. And my job isn’t just what my job description spells out. My job is living out 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12. That process of working day in, day out, week in, week out, year after year has a term. And that term is stacking days.

We stack regular day upon regular day, waiting for that moment that our life changes and we can move away from the mundane into the exciting. But I’ve recently discovered that God is no more in the exciting than He is in the mundane. And if God can be glorified in the spotlight, then He most assuredly will be glorified in the mundane. He will be honored that I give 100% when I have every opportunity not to. He will be honored that I choose to get up and go to work when it is easier to stay home. He will be honored when I push myself to get better when I could just slide by or pass my work on to someone else.

So to me, there’s an excitement in stacking days because I know it’s leading somewhere. I know that my work, no matter how I feel in the moment, is not in vain. I know that God will take every exciting and mundane moment and make more out of it than I ever could. As Lysa TerKeurst says, “Our job is obedience; God’s job is results.” And if obedience looks like stacking days, then stacking days I will do, and put the rest in God’s hands.