4. Katie Luther—A Portrait of Service

This article is an edited transcript of Susie Hawkins’ audio message on Passionate Faith. Appreciation for the transcription work goes to Marilyn Fine.

We are continuing today in our series that we are doing on “Passionate Faith on Display, Portraits of Significant Women in Church History.” For those of you who are new, we are looking at the lives of women—not biblical women, not women in the Old or New Testament, but women who lived after the New Testament times on up to our current time. I have chosen some specific women, but let me tell you, it is not easy to choose which women to talk about. We have an amazing heritage of Christian women who have paved the way for us and modeled for us what it means to walk with Christ.

The song that we using, which is my current obsession, is a song called, “Give Me One True and Holy Passion.” I love that song. It is such a great prayer to pray that in our life God would give us this passion for living for Him and walking with Him. Each one of these women that we are talking about during this series I believe will trace that passion in her life and in her time. Her times are very important—the historical context of her time, what the world was like when each one of these women lived, what the culture that she had to work within, and how she lived out her faith in that particular time.

We have talked about Perpetua who was a portrait of martyrdom, a portrait of courage. We have talked about Monica who prayed for her son, Augustine, as a portrait of a praying mother. Remember how we talked about her and how she literally chased her son across the Mediterranean and prayed him into the Kingdom of God. Then, we talked about a portrait last week of the Catherine’s—Catherine of Siena and Catherine Booth. These women were known for their great compassion. How they lived out their faith by ministering to people around them and really living out the compassion of Christ. So, today we are talking about our fourth portrait in the series.

Today, we are going to talk about one of the most interesting women. There is a lot written about her and all these women. These are very well known women in Church history. We are going to talk about Katie Luther, a portrait of service. One of the most interesting of these women is the story of Katie Luther. She was what we would call today the first modern pastor’s wife, a ministry wife, which is a term I prefer to use. She was a pioneer in ministry from her home. She did this by moving the center of Christian service, from the monastery, the convent, (or the cloister, you could call it, which would include both of them) from the cloister to the home. She was a very, very unique woman. Why is she so important? She represented the new spirit of the Reformation. We are going to talk about that a little bit today.

Now, I know that when we talk about some of these things we are going to have to do a little history lesson. Does anybody in here just love world history? Did everybody sleep through it like I did? Well, actually, I went back to school later, a lot later, in my life when I really wanted to learn. That is a good time to go to school. You actually want to learn. When you are in college, you do not want to learn. You know, you just want to get out. So, you may have been like me and slept through most of that. But, it is important to understand the times in which they lived. Katie Luther was a spunky, feisty, energetic young woman who found herself, through a strange turn in the road of her life, married to one of the most influential men in the last millennium, Martin Luther.

Through her life and through her ministry, we learn some very, very important principles of service— like learning to serve God in the place where He puts you. I like the term “life assignment.” This is one of my favorite new terms. I like that. It is very clear. Each one of us has a life assignment, a place God puts us. He puts us in a country. He puts us in a city. He puts us in a workplace. He puts us in a family. Within that place of our life, we have an assignment of living out our faith. Katie certainly did that well.

Now, if we are going to understand a little bit about her we have to go back and just remind ourselves of a few historical things, of what was happening in the world at the time she lived. This is the sixteenth century, 1517 was when “officially” the Reformation started. Now, you may remember that from New Testament times all the way up until this time in the sixteenth century the Church had preserved the classic culture of western civilization. The Church had become very wealthy. It considered itself the authority over spiritual affairs and civic affairs. Remember, up until after the Reformation, actually, there was no concept of the separation of Church and state. There were some people, you could call them streams of dissenters. From New Testament times up until Reformation time, there were always some that had that idea and had a clear idea of scriptural authority and what it meant to walk with God—truly, being a believer in the sense of biblical faith. They were minimized, we could put it that way. They were considered to be heretics. The Roman Catholic Church believed that only the Church could interpret scripture, that the Church had the right to rule ascetic life, to govern, and that all authority was with the Church.

Now, there were some people, as I said, who had made attempts at reform. John Wycliffe, for example, was a man with whom you may be familiar. In the fourteenth century he was a preacher and a priest at Oxford. He translated the Bible into English from Latin, which horrified the Church. He was a major “heretic” for that whose body was exhumed and destroyed. He had a huge influence on a few other early reformers. He ended up being a big influence on Martin Luther.

At the time this started happening, European culture was in an upheaval. It was the time of the Renaissance. You remember the Renaissance. It was a time of “new thought coming out of the Dark Ages.” People associate Italy with the birth of the Renaissance. If you have ever been to Italy, you might remember noticing how many of the arts came from Italy. I remember walking through the square in Florence, Italy, and looking at all these statues of people and noting everything beautiful from Italy. Opera, art, fashion, music, you name it—they produced such beauty. That was the birthplace of the Renaissance. It spread like wildfire through Europe. It was questioning the old ways. New interest in the humanities, and I do not mean humanism in the sense we know it, but in arts and language and music and doubting old suppositions and questioning the new ways. Also, there was a tendency to an interest in local governments rather than simply having one holy Roman emperor like Charles V. There came the idea that local provinces would have the right to govern themselves.

Likewise, there was a dissatisfaction with the Church. You remember this very well that there was such blatant perversion within the Roman Catholic Church at that time. Priests were having illegitimate children. There were indulgences which you may remember was when they would say people go to purgatory, which has no biblical basis, and the only way to get your loved ones out of purgatory was what—you remember, give some money! If you have ever seen the film, “Luther,” it is a wonderful film which describes some of the issues occurring. Simony, which was the selling of church offices, was common. If you wanted your nephew to be a high-ranking Church official, just offer the priest a certain amount of money and it was just amazing what could happen. Thus all over there was just a time of new thinking and questioning. A new spirit had come upon Europe.

It is so interesting that Luther, of course, would bring this whole idea of questioning the authority of the Church and the practices of the Catholic Church at a time when the conditions were ripe for something to happen. It is also important to remember that the printing press had been invented about 50 years before and this was probably, some historians say the most important development of the second millennium. Because of the invention of the printing press people were learning to read and there was a way to spread information. So, all of this happened at once. The time came for the Reformation.

Now, when Luther began this movement he did not intend to begin a movement. He wanted to have a debate about some of these issues. He did not get a debate; he got a Reformation. Out of this whole movement, you may remember the five solas of the Reformation where the reformers came to reestablish their faith, a biblical faith, that it was grace alone. By grace alone are we saved through faith. Scripture alone is our authority. Faith alone is the justification. Christ alone is our way of salvation. Sola Deo Gloria, everything exists for the glory of God. These five solas, Latin for “only,” came out of the Reformation and really took the Church and set it back on a biblical path because it had veered off.

Now, let us get down to Luther and Katie. Luther was a monk in Germany who was going into law. There are all kinds of stuff written about him. You can read his story anywhere you want to. It is everywhere. He became a priest, but he was tormented by his own lack of commitment, his lack of security. He was just consumed with his sin. He thought he could never get to heaven by his own righteousness. He just was a tormented soul. Really, you read these things about him. He just tormented himself with his questions and his doubts. He ended up having a very deep spiritual experience where through the book of Romans he realized, he came to understand, the Holy Spirit so gracefully imparted understanding to him. In the book of Romans, the Bible talks about the righteousness of God. That Christ’s righteousness is imparted to us. It does not mean that we have to be perfect. It means that when God looks at us, once we have given our life to Jesus, he sees Christ. It is a passive righteousness, if you want to call it that. Once he got that in his mind that changed everything for him. So, he began to really study scripture. He was the pastor at a little church in Wittenberg, Germany. One day, he had some questions he had, things he wanted to debate within the Church. So he posted his 95 Theses, his 95 questions, on the door of the church—which was the bulletin board. That was kind of like the bulletin board of the church. So he posted it there. Little did he know that he would never quite get around to these debates. He would have many more significant arguments that would come his way.

Well, in keeping with our story of Katie, let me just narrow this down. One of Luther’s questions, one of his arguments with the Church, was celibacy. He began to look at scripture and he began to question the doctrine of celibacy. Did you ever see that old cartoon where it shows the little joke about the monk in the basement of the library? He is leaning over a book and he is sobbing. The older priest comes in and says, “What is wrong? What is the matter?” He looked up and he said, “It doesn’t say celibate. It says celebrate. We have misread it all these years.” That is kind of what Martin Luther did. He started looking at scripture and questioning the whole doctrine of celibacy.

Now, to be fair, in I Corinthians 7, I believe it is, you know Paul talks about that it is better to marry than to burn with lust. He talks about the advantages of being single and not having a family so you can preach and travel and all of that. Well, the Church had pulled that specific advice out of scripture and made it more or less a required doctrine of the Church. Now, in the early centuries of the Church there were men and women who were married—pastors, monks, priests who were married. Yet, of course, we do not know anything about their wives lives because usually they died about age 30 having babies and they could not read or write anyway so we do not know much about their lives. By the twelfth century, one of the Church councils, the second letter in council, outlawed marriage for priests.

There were plenty of places though, where there were exceptions. We know there were plenty of illegitimate children running around Europe and this was a difficult doctrine to enforce. So, Luther began to question this whole presupposition that sexual activity, or bodily functions even, were sinful in some ways. You can read this back even in the time of Augustine. There was this idea that sexual activity, even within marriage, was less than desirable. It was not holy. It was not sanctified by God. It was a necessary evil that you had to do in order to have children. I am not sure all men felt that way, but, some of them wrote about it anyway as a necessary evil. He began to challenge this. That was one of the many, many things he challenged in the Catholic Church. He began to challenge the whole idea of celibacy. He challenged all of these different points of that Church. Well, his writings of course, you can imagine, spread like wildfire. You know what? They did not have the internet, but I will tell you what. You can be sure it spread everywhere within every convent, every monastery. People were getting papers stuck under their door, you know, with information about Luther, about his challenges. Some people thought he was the most refreshing voice which had come along; other people thought he was, of course, Satan himself.

Well, there was this Cistercian convent in the Torgau area where Katie Luther was from. “Katherina von Bora” (as her name was then) was in this convent, and it was a very, very secluded monastery under the local province of a man who was an enemy of the Reformation. That is how Europe was. It was divided into provinces and districts ruled by a local ruler. They were either friendly to the Reformation or they were dead-set against it.

Nevertheless, all these writings of Luther got into this convent and so Katherina von Bora and 11 of her friends decided that they thought this guy had something. He was right on. They wanted to leave the convent, but it was against the law. So, she wrote him a letter and she said that we cannot go along with any more of this church doctrine and we want to follow Christ and we want to hear more about your teaching. We want to get out of here. So, they came up with a plan.

A man who was delivering fish in 12 barrels came in late one night to the convent, unloaded the fish and then loaded the nuns in the barrels. Now, don’t you know they smelled good! That’s the story. This is in the film, “Luther,” also. The wagon rolls up and these bedraggled women, smelling like we do not even want to think about, get off the wagon, right there on the steps of the church. Luther is there to meet them. He says, and, of course, there were a lot of his words recorded, that he looked at them. He said that he felt so sorry for them. They were such a wretched little bunch and they had problems because most girls were married at age 15 and 16. These girls were well past their prime. What was going to happen to them? Three went back to their family so that was one possible option. They could also go to a convent which was a little more friendlier to the Reformation, or they could get married.

Now, I do not know that you and I can possibly understand what a revolutionary idea that this was that these priests, who had left the church and left their vows because they no longer believed what the Catholic Church was teaching, and that these nuns, who had done the same, might get together. This was shocking. This was appalling to some people, but the men were saying, “Why not? We do not think there is anything wrong with marriage. This is a holy calling just like to the priesthood or to the ministry. Marriage is a holy calling. It is sanctioned by God. It is a gift of God. What is wrong with it?” So, of course, they would get together.

Martin Luther started looking for husbands out of his reformers. There is so much written about reformer wives. They were unbelievable. They were theological. They were literate. They joined their husbands as partners in this work. They had to house refugees all across Europe that were running from authority. That is a whole other topic. These women were strong, strong committed Christians. So Martin started pairing them up and he got everybody married off but Katherine. She had picked somebody out, but he did not want her. He said she was too feisty. Well, then he chose somebody for her and she turned her nose up and said he was too sanctimonious. He is holier than thou and she did not like him.

Well, he got really irritated with her because she did not like who he had picked out for her. The one she was initially interested in sure did not want her. So, she just pursued through the proper channel and said, “Well, I will just marry you.” So, he thought about that. He thought he would remain single, and he thought that she was awfully arrogant and picky. But, he consented and, honestly and truly, it is the truth. The Catholics, those who were against the Reformation, when they heard that Martin Luther was marrying a former nun, thought their offspring would be the Anti-Christ. They really thought Revelation was coming into play right here.

He was 42 and she was 26. They were married 21 years. It is really one of the most enjoyable reads you will ever have in reading about their marriage. He was gruff, stern, a thinker, a worker, and given to melancholy and bad moods as, you know, those tortured souls like those really smart people are. I never had the problem myself. I can pretty much go to the mall and I will be okay. He was everything—a lecturer, a teacher, he challenged civil laws, he wrote hymns, and he reformed the society he lived in. Many unjust and unfair laws he effected, which we will get to in a minute. Their marriage is one of the great stories. Their home was marked by tenderness, sacrificial love and respect for one another. It is a great story.

Katie had learned how to read and write, and how to study scripture in the convent. She had worked part-time in a home. As part of her service, she had learned homemaking skills. She had learned how to farm. She had learned how to fish. When they married, Martin Luther was given a cloister in a monastery that was never a home. The monstary had been closed down. Everybody had left. So, the government just gave it to him. It was called the “Black Cloister.” Does that not sound appealing! It sounds awful – a dark, gray, place in Germany called the “Black Cloister.”

Well, we can only imagine what it looked like. You know, in my mind I can see him bringing Katie home from their honeymoon and her walking in that door. By his own admission, his bed was straw. He had lain on the same straw for about two years. A dump even. You know…we will not even go into that. You all have had a nice lunch. Can you imagine? I can just imagine any of these women, but Katie for sure, throwing open the door of this place and saying, “We are fumigating this place and we are planting flowers. That is the first thing we are doing.” She just took over and managed his household and his ministry in such a way that it is a little bit like L’Abri with the Schaeffer’s. Who, in the 20th century, had that place in Switzerland where thinkers, young writers, and others would come and they would just have dinners together and talk and share and argue and debate. It was like that, although she had a lot of work to do!

One of the things that was so appealing about Katie is that she had such good humor. She was not afraid. She had great respect for Martin, but there all kinds of stories about their interaction. For several days, he had been in a really foul mood. He had been grumpy and gruff. Nothing was happening right and he was discouraged. He would not talk and just stomped around. So, she did not say anything. Then, the next morning she got up and sat on a stool in the middle of their living room. She put on black clothing and put a black veil over her head and just sat there. He came through the room and stopped. He asked, “What is wrong with you. What are you doing, woman?” She replied, “Oh, dear, it is just terrible. The Lord in Heaven is dead.” He asked what she was talking about that the Lord in Heaven is dead? “God is not dead!” She said, while looking at her veil, “Oh really, well the way you have been acting I thought that is what had had happened.” He laughed. She had a way of bringing him out of his moods. Another time, he went into one of these moods and locked himself in his office. Now, she had little children and guests and people coming in to talk with him. He just could not be doing that. So, she just kept going about her work and hired a workman from the village to come in. He just took the door off the hinges. Martin is sitting there and the door comes off and there is Katie and the kids. You know, faith. It is just really delightful.

They had such a complementary relationship. She loved to talk and ask questions. He would tease her about this. While she was doing needlework at night and he was studying, she would sit there and talk about such things like who the duke of Prussia was related to and then she would say, “Why does David brag so much about having humility? When he is bragging about it, how could he have it?” She asked him questions like that and he would sigh and roll his eyes, but their conversation was energetic and lively and there was this great complementary love of husband and wife.

He said this after being married, that marriage brought so many things to a church. It brought so many things to families. Up until that time, honestly, this is the truth, marriage was considered a secondary calling. The first calling was to the convent or to the monastery. That was seen as the highest calling. Martin Luther and Katie reestablished the priority of marriage as being one of the highest callings you can have, one of the greatest blessings. You could serve God just as well being married as you could in a monastery or a convent. He said, “Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave.” It is a great statement.

I think what she introduced was the whole concept of being a partner in ministry. Paul talks about this in his letters. Remember just about at the end of every one of his epistles he says give greetings to these people, my co-laborers in Christ, my partners. These are the people who worked with me. That is what Katie would be. She worked with him in running the household, raising the children, ministering to the guests. This cloister was huge and there were a lot of empty rooms. So she had cots put in there for the homeless and for refugees. It housed people, sick people. She just did everything.

Really, the best way to look at her life is to go to Proverbs 31. If you look at some of the things about that woman in Proverbs 31 we see them in Katie’s life. Verse 11 of Proverbs 31 says, “The heart of her husband trusts safely in her.” Katie enhanced his ministry. He trusted her in raising the children, teaching them, educating them. She participated in theological discussions.

When he died, he left everything to her. Now, talk about safely trusting your wife. This is one of the things that was not normal in that day and time. When a man died, he left his inheritance to his children and then they, in turn, would provide for their mother of if their mother was dead the step-mother. This is not a good thing, right. Martin worked hard to overturn that law and left her his inheritance. In the note he said to give it to Katie because he trusted her totally to do what was right with his resources and to provide for the children. She worked willingly with her hands. Women in that day had to work crops, fish, and farm. She bought a little farm where she could raise cows and milk and all that kind of stuff.

“She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household.” She mothered six children. She also cared for six other children who were orphans of Luther’s family—nieces and nephews, a nephew and a great-nephew. Of course, she had household help to manage. She had to manage all the servants and, you are going to love this, like all good pastor’s wives you know what she did better than anybody? She brewed her own beer. Don’t you love that! A good German. She brewed her own beer and everybody loved it. I love that. It is hilarious.

“She considered the fields and buys it.” She was a farmer. She planted vineyards. “She strengthened her arms.” She was energetic and strong and just busy doing everything. I love this. The Proverbs 31 woman “stretches out her hands to the poor” and Katie did that. She ministered to refugees. Her door was always open to the poor and to the sick. Some people called her as she ministered their own Catherine of Siena. Do you remember her? Catherine of Siena we had last week who ministered to people in the Black Plague when even the slightest touch would cause you to die of this plague. Catherine of Siena was unafraid to walk into illness and sickness and minister to people and hold their hands and their heads while they were dying. That is what she did. In fact, one of her sons, Paul, became a doctor and he said later in life that he was inspired to become a doctor by watching his mother minister to the sick. He said to this day, no matter how much training I have I can never be the doctor my mother was.

“She opens her mouth with wisdom and on her tongue is the law of kindness.” She had a wonderful reputation for kindness to other people. She had wisdom. At night, they would have, you can read these and there are lots of written records which they called “table talk,” which was Martin Luther’s theological debate at the dinner table. Students would come in. You can imagine how students and young pastors would want to come and have dinner there. It was called “table talk.” Many times, Katie if she could would join in the discussions and she would debate. I do not have time to go into some of the things they would debate about. He would tease her. He said on more than one occasion that Katie understands the Bible better than any pope had ever understood it.

So, “her children rise up and call her blessed” and they did. They loved their children. They had a daughter who died in her first year. Then, the grief of their life was when their 13-year-old daughter, Magdalena, died in Martin Luther’s arms. By all stories of his life, this was the great grief of his life and sorrow. He loved this girl, this daughter. They clung to each other for support.

Upon his death, she wrote that the only thing she could cling to was Psalm 31, “In Thee, Oh Lord, do I put my trust. Deliver me in Thy righteousness. Be my strong rock.” He left his resources to her. Her life went on and took many turns. A war came. They had to flee the cloister. They came back and everything was destroyed. She had to rebuild. She contracted some kind of bronchial infection and finally died. Her last prayer was this. She had one of her children write it out. “Lord, my Savior, Thou standest at the door and must enter in. Oh, come, Thou beloved guest, for I desire to depart and be with Thee. Let my children be committed to Thy mercy. Lord, look down upon in mercy on my church. May the pure doctrine, which God has sent through my husband, be handed down unadulterated to posterity. Dear Lord, I thank Thee for all the trials through which Thou didst lead me and by which Thou does prepare me to behold Thy glory. Thou hast never forsaken or forgotten me. Thou hast ever more caused Thy face to shine upon me when I called upon Thee. Like Jacob, I will not let Thee go unless Thou bless me. I will cling to Thee forever.” Thus Katie died. She lived a rich, full life serving the Lord beside her husband. What a portrait of service.

Now, quickly, what can we learn from Katie Luther? She lived in a very different time than we live. She, a former nun, was married to a reformer. There are some things, nevertheless, that we can learn from her life. First of all, often our life’s assignment takes a different turn than we expected. Is there anybody in here whose life has gone exactly like you expected it to? Life always takes unexpected turns in the road. This was true of her. Learn to accept it. She learned to accept it as God’s plan for her. Now, some of these things are difficult. Some are wonderful. I love this quote. I just read this last year in Oswald Chambers’ “My Utmost.” I have read that book for years and years and I do not remember seeing this sentence before. I love this and wrote it in the back of my Bible as soon as I read it. “If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace. If God has made your cup bitter, drink it in communion with Him.” I love that. It is so good! If your life’s assignment is sweet right now, take it with grace and accept it with joy. If right now you are in an assignment that is difficult, you are going through a hard place, a hard time, you just remember your suffering is a part of the sufferings of Christ. Drink it in communion with Him. He suffered as well. He knows that road of suffering better than you do and can minister to you and strengthen you and walk with you along that road. Drink it in communion with Him. I love that.

Secondly, it is a good thing to be reminded that we can find God’s presence and His joy and serve Him in the ordinary days and weeks and moments of life. Sometimes the holiest moments do not always feel holy, right? Now, I feel holy at certain times in church or praising God or whatever. You can feel holy. But, there are other times when you do not feel holy, but you need to be aware that it is a holy moment. That is in the sacredness of the ordinary day. There is a big contrast between Katie Luther’s life and Catherine of Siena who would be alone for days on end. That is quite different than Katie Luther who was out farming and milking cows and birthing babies in the afternoon and being back to work the day, same thing the next day. This calling is holy and sacred. Sometimes I think we forget that. I do, don’t you, in just the housework and keeping the house going and work, your vocation, taking care of parents, taking care of kids, whatever you are doing? Sometimes it does not always feel holy, but it is. Where is God? Oh, He is in the kitchen with the pots and pans. He is not always on top of the mountaintop. He is there, too, but He is also with those doing the ordinary acts of service.

I was thinking about this about Mary and Martha. You know the story of Bethany of how Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet and Martha was so busy preparing a meal because 13 men had dropped in for lunch. She was irritable and she asked Jesus why won’t Mary come and help me? You know the story. He said “Martha, you have forgotten the most important thing.” Martha’s error there was not that she was busy doing work. It was not wrong of her to prepare food. They were waiting to eat. Somebody had to fix it. It was not that she was preparing food, that she was working in the kitchen, that she was taking care of the servants. Her problem was that she got so busy in the distractions of ordinary work that she forgot to see Jesus right there. That is what can happen to us. I just want to remind you that when you go back to your office and you do your emails and clean out your purse and you do some things you know you have to do this afternoon and on your way home you stop by the grocery store and the cleaners and you do all that kind of stuff. Ordinary acts of service are just as pleasing to God as praise and worship on Sunday morning if you do them unto Him.

There is a great statement that says the true calling of a Christian is not to be doing extraordinary things but to do ordinary things in an ordinary way. I remind you to think about that this week. We have three grandchildren, 5, 4 and 3, and then we have a six-month-old and we have another one coming. We have group A and now we have group B coming. I feel quite sure there will not be a group C because of the way group A acts. It is crazy at our house when they come over. We have a basketball player who has the basketball going inside with the Christian hip/hop music going because that is what the Mavs practice to. So he is making baskets, throwing the basketball in the places where you should not be throwing a basketball. But, what are your going to do? It is just the cutest little kid you have ever seen. You are going to let him do what he wants to. Then, we have two girls who have babies and strollers and they put on shows and they pull out all the chairs and all the…you just cannot imagine what our house looks like. OS and I just look at each other and say, whose life is this? What has happened to us? I always stop, I try to really anyway. The other day I stopped and I looked and within two minutes all the disaster, the mess, the food, the drinks, the music, the everything, the shows that were going on with all the babies and I thought, “I need to remember this is a holy moment.” These are sacred moments. These are sacred moments to hear a child laugh, even to hear him cry. The joy of life. It is life, even the busyness.

Last night working on my income tax I tried to say to myself, “this is a good moment. Somewhere in this is a good moment. I have an income. I can pay taxes. I live in America.” We are so blessed to live in America. There are holy moments in everything we do. That is what I think Katie found and that is what I want us to be reminded of today. Find the sacred in these everyday things of life. Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord and not unto man.” That will enable you to find the sacred as you serve the Lord. Wherever you are, whatever calling you have, you can serve Him in that same way.