The Sacred in the Small Things

Dr. Doug Swartz: All right, good morning. Don't worry, I'm not your speaker for today. I'm just here to tell you who is here.
So if you've missed the emails and signs and posters and screens, it is Scholars Colloquium right now.
We're fortunate enough this year to have Dr. Stephen Baldrige from Mary Harden Baylor.
He's going to be speaking at 1 o'clock in the Baker today, so we're going to learn a lot more about who he is, what he does.
then. For now, I'm just going to tell you he's not a stranger to this place. He started out
sitting in a seat just a couple years ago as a student, finished his social work degree here,
went on to get a master's, PhD. Now he's a professor of social work and a dean at Mary
Harden Baylor. And beyond that, his parents, his mom taught biology, his dad's on the board
of trustees, so he knows this place. He's been here. So along the way, he's learned a lot,
he has done a lot, and I think you can learn a lot from him. So between what's going to happen
now, come this afternoon, we're going to benefit from the wisdom he has. Thank you.
Dr. Stephen Baldridge: Well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming today. You know,
in all of my years working at Christian universities, I have never spoken in chapel.
I was going to say I've never been asked to speak in chapel, but that's not true. I've been asked
to speak in chapel twice. Once when I was a senior here and I slept through my alarm.
And so I woke up at 11:30 and missed chapel. A few years later, I had started at ACU. I worked
at ACU for 11 years. And I was asked to speak in chapel there. I got an email in one of my first
years there from a young woman who's in charge of what we call Justice Week. And she asked if I
would be willing to speak in Justice Week towards the end of the semester. I said, yeah, I would
love that. That's a topic I'm passionate about. And so, you know, fast forward to about two weeks
out from chapel. And I emailed her and said, hey, just want to make sure we're still good to go.
Any specific instructions? And she writes back and says, hey, good news. We found someone else. So
and LCU was not able to find anyone better, so here I am.
Also, I understand this might be the last chapel of the year.
And so if you are here, you're either really dedicated to chapel
or you are a procrastinator.
Either way, I'm glad you're here.
It's really good to be home.
This is literally home for me.
Lubbock is where I grew up.
As Dr. Schwartz said, I've been around LCU my entire life.
I grew up in the house that my dad grew up in.
It's just right over there.
I felt silly driving to campus this morning because it takes longer to drive than it does to walk.
I always tell people that when I started at LCU and I moved to Johnson Hall,
I literally moved further away from the caf than where I grew up.
So this place is home, and it's always so great to be back here.
So when I come home, which I try to do a couple times a year, I always go out for a walk.
I walk every day I suppose because when you're middle-aged that's what you do and so I go for
a walk I try to go for a walk every morning went for one this morning and when I'm here I always
make a point to just come walk around campus like I said because it's so close and there's I mean
there's so much new stuff around campus but man being on campus it just it takes me back I have
so many really good memories of this place I walk around and I think of the times I spent just
hanging out in the sub. I think of the walks that I took back and forth from here to the CDC during
Follies weekend. I think of all of those different things, and it just, it brings back so many good
memories. This place, this place was really formative to me, and I'm not sure I was able to
say that when I was here, but in retrospect, it really was. And so I was on one of these walks
in January, I think, when I was here last, and I'm walking around, and I noticed on the door of one
the buildings that says, LCU, we walk with you. I paid attention to that for a couple of different
reasons. I tend to just notice mottos of colleges. I have been involved in several branding efforts
of universities over the years. So I pay attention to that. At UMHB, at Mary Harden Baylor, ours is
live on purpose. And they're great. And so that's one of the things that stuck out with me.
Another thing that stuck out was probably because I was literally on a walk when I read that. And so
I was trying to think of maybe what that would mean to me. And so we walk with you. Like I said,
I do a lot of walking. Here's the thing about walking. It's boring. Like I say, I walk every
day. I don't look forward to it a lot. A lot of times I'm just, I don't want to listen to a
podcast. I'm tired of my playlist. It's just something you do. It's mundane unless you're,
a competitive walker, which I don't imagine there's a lot of sitting in here today,
but unless you're a competitive walker, there's probably not a lot of walks in your life that
you remember. I don't know, maybe a couple. Those are not typically involved in our core memories.
But for those of us that are privileged to have the ability to walk,
we do it a lot. I mean, we don't even think about it. It's just how we get from here to there.
And I think that's really how life is.
It's boring most of the time.
When you think back to your childhood,
it might be hard to remember the day-to-day things that you did.
You're going to remember, I think, the big stuff,
like your holidays, your vacations, big school events.
But you might be hard-pressed to say,
this is what a Tuesday night in February was like when I was 12.
But what I'm going to make the case for this morning
is that those boring times are the most important parts of our lives.
Dare I say maybe the holiest times in our lives.
I started to think about this a few weeks ago.
I was scrolling on Instagram, which is a habit that I'm trying to break.
I saw a guy talking about our time.
He was talking to 18-year-olds,
so I'm sure my algorithm knew that that would interest me.
And it was actually part of a TEDx clip.
So I went and I found the whole clip and watched it.
And basically the case that he was making was
he showed up on screen. There was a screen he showed just hundreds and hundreds of little dots.
And he said, these dots, each one of these represents a month of your life that you have
left. And he's talking to 18 year olds and he says, assuming you live to 90 years old.
And so he goes in to talk about what the rest of your life is going to look like as an 18 year old.
He continues, he said, about a third of those months left will be spent sleeping. He said,
27 months will be spent in the bathroom and taking care of hygiene. He said 126 months you
will dedicate to school and your career. 36 will be spent cooking and eating. 36 will be spent
doing chores and errands, which leaves you with 334 months of free time. He then goes on to say
that those remaining months, those 334 months, he said that is where you pursue your passions,
your bucket list items, you travel.
That's where you change the world in those leftover 334 months.
Now, the point of his talk was about social media and screens.
He goes on to say that people your age will spend 92% of the rest of those months
on social media and looking at screens.
So take that for what you will.
I guess it's something to consider.
That is not what the point of this talk is.
What stuck out to me was a line that he used about those leftover months.
that he really used, I guess, to kind of hammer his point home.
He said, how you spend that remaining time
when all those other things are done,
he said, that is going to determine the quality of your life.
That is going to determine the kind of person that you're going to become.
After all of that other boring stuff happens,
the remaining time is what is important to consider.
And I will tell you today, I could not disagree with him more.
He said that those remaining months are where you're going to make a difference in the world.
What I want to tell you this morning, as it is all of those other boring things,
your time at work and meals, driving around with your family,
as you walk around your dorm or your apartment in the morning, getting ready for school,
those are the most important moments of your life.
That is where you decide the kind of person you're going to become.
Life is lived in the boring moments.
the moments that we will forget days after they happen.
But man, I think those are the holiest moments that we have.
The day-to-day interactions with each other,
what we do at work, who we share our meals with,
the way we talk to each other in the car on the way to the grocery store,
that's life.
I think there's this narrative out there,
and I think it's certainly pushed by social media,
that you all have to do big things,
and especially at this point in your life, you've got to be thinking,
what are you going to do to change the world?
What is the big thing that you're going to do in your life?
I suppose that's really, I suppose that's good advice if you want to think that way.
But maybe we are a bit misguided on what it means to change the world.
I think, you know, we see people throughout history, MLK, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa.
We see these people and we think that's who I want to be like.
And if that's your goal, that's awesome.
But that is not everybody's path.
That is certainly not my path.
And that's not God's plan.
dare I say, for most of you.
While people like that are changing the world in their own ways,
other people are helping their friend with homework,
or they're working a 12-hour shift to help their family make ends meet,
or they're sitting in a caf talking with their friends about their lives,
or they're sitting in a hospital lobby holding their friend
who is losing their mother to cancer.
Friends, that is changing the world.
What some call boring and mundane, I'm going to say that is really what makes a difference in people's lives.
And that's holy.
Changing the world, I guess, might look like making a famous speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
But it also means showing a new freshman on campus that being homesick is okay.
That crying a little bit is okay.
It might look like graduating and eventually being a mid-level manager and treating your employees like family instead of just workers.
It might look like if you're a nurse staying a little bit longer in someone's hospital
room and holding their hand as they struggle.
It is the details of life, the monotony, the day-to-day things that we get caught up in,
and that is what is important.
I talked about my two friends from LCU with someone the other day.
I have two, my two best friends I talk to every day of my life.
And we met here.
We sat by each other in freshman biology.
We ended up being in a club together.
We lived together our last two years.
And most of our time at LCU was, I guess, boring because I don't remember most of it.
We sat in a SUB and did nothing and laughed.
We went to club meetings.
We sat around our house and ate frozen pizza and watched Survivor, which tells you how long that show has been on.
But other than that, I really can't tell you what we did because it was not memorable.
I mean, it was boring.
it's boring to talk about those things
the three of us, we try to meet up once a year
and a few months ago we flew to Savannah, Georgia
because that's where one of them lives
and we're there and one afternoon we're just sitting in a restaurant
and we're talking about our lives, about our jobs
just about boring stuff
and there was kind of a gap in the conversation
and I looked at them and I said
this is holy right here
and to my surprise they did not laugh
they agreed and it's holy because of who I was with I know those two guys will drop anything if
I need anything they would stop what they are doing and they would be here in a matter of hours
no matter what it cost them and that's because we lived life together we did the boring stuff
together I think this is what Paul is talking about in first Thessalonians in chapter 4 verse
11, he tells the church, he says, make it your ambition to lead a quiet life. You should mind
your business and work with your hands just as we told you so that your daily life may win the
respect of outsiders. Now, we of course need to be mindful of context here. I don't think Paul is
telling us we all have to live quiet lives and work with our hands, but I think Paul is literally
saying that a faithful life can be quiet and it can be filled with ordinary work, but it is still
powerful and meaningful. So as you're sitting here towards the end of the year, if you are worried
about what you're going to do in your life that is big, if you're just waiting until that next big
thing, just looking for that next vacation or experience, if you're just trying to put your
head down and kill time till you graduate, I want to encourage you a little bit just to slow down,
to look up for a minute,
go on a nice, long, boring walk with somebody.
There is holiness happening here
on a Thursday morning,
right now, in whatever you're doing.
The sacred is not just found on the mountaintop.
It's found in the laundry.
It's found in the dishes.
It's found in the notes you're taking for class
and the meals you eat with your friends.
So what I want to tell you to do this morning
is just take some time,
sit in that,
and experience others around you
and experience God.
That's all I have for you this morning.
Go in peace.
Thank you.