Regina 
I grew up singing. Nerves and microphones were as common as the sunrise for the vast majority of my life. In music a refrain is a repeated segment of a song; it is often called a chorus. The song goes back to this portion again and again. Wherever the music goes it always comes back home to its refrain. Our lives are a lot like that I think. There are moments we enjoy that are too precious for words, times when life proves to be quite exquisite. Other days we are low and struggling,our thoughts searching out the paths of peace, straining for Jesus. Then there are the refrains. This where we live most of life, on repeat. If we do not learn how to navigate our hearts in this space of life no matter how high the highs go or how low the lows plunge, we will live fruitlessly and probably with little joy. We must learn to live in the mundane as well as we navigate through the mountain tops.
My refrain looks a lot like rising to read the Word, nurse a babe, prepare meal after meal snack after snack, school two big kids, wipe the bottoms of two little ones, sweep at least a hundred times (warm smile), go about daily chores, teach a music lesson, prepare a craft of art project, sweep some more, water flowers (if I remember), holds hands with my handsome one, and so forth. Everyday has its rhythm, its usual, it’s common, but if the common fails to be offered up to God as worship, we will find that we are worshippers in need repentance. And who isn’t guilty of this error? Living for the once a year, once a month, even once a week high places and neglecting to live for Jesus in the ordinary.
What can be discouraging about going to work everyday or keeping house or motherhood is that we do not often feel that we are doing something extraordinary. But most of life is lived in the ordinary. So the folly of wishing for mountain tops only is that those moments cannot aid us in achieving an extraordinary life. Ironically an extraordinarily beautiful life consists of the adjoining of very ordinary moments that are lived well and lived heartily as unto the Lord. If we will not meet the Lord in prayer on a common Monday or while cooking a usual meal all our grand attempts at hitting it out of the park in prayer and worship on Sunday’s or creating a spectacular meal for guests are done in vain. We must discipline ourselves to see the joy in serving our master wherever we find ourselves.
Let it be said that the refrain of our lives always was a sounding forth of Jesus worthiness wherever, in the everyday, with our everyday people. Let our worship in the public sphere spring from there.
