This is part of my year-long series exploring human-centered alternatives to the spiritual promises in Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest. Today’s entry, “The Spiritual Saint”, promises that “spiritual saints” can know Jesus Christ and realize his life “in any and every circumstance” through “reckless abandonment,” viewing every moment as a “God-sent opportunity for gaining knowledge of Christ” and manifesting their Lord even through menial tasks.
Here’s what seeking to know Christ through reckless abandonment to circumstances actually delivered:
“Don’t view this as just work,” her small group leader encouraged earnestly. “See every moment as God-sent opportunity to know Christ. Enthrone Jesus in your cleaning work. The Holy Spirit will help you manifest him through even menial tasks.”
Maria had taken a job cleaning office buildings to support her family after her husband’s disability left them financially desperate. Working night shifts scrubbing toilets and emptying trash felt degrading after her previous career as a teacher, but spiritual guidance promised transformation through embracing these circumstances as divine opportunities.
Maria tried desperately to see each menial task as spiritual advancement. She prayed while mopping floors, seeking to know Christ through her circumstances. Surely this humbling work was God’s way of developing her spiritual sainthood through reckless abandonment to whatever he sent her way.
But the promised spiritual realization was cruel self-deception.
Long hours of physical labor left Maria exhausted rather than spiritually enriched. The repetitive, isolating work provided zero meaningful connection to Christ or divine purpose. Her attempts to enthrone Jesus in cleaning tasks felt forced and hollow when facing inadequate wages and exploitative working conditions.
Meanwhile, Maria’s coworker Carmen approached the same job with zero expectation of spiritual transformation through menial labor. Carmen saw cleaning work as temporary necessity while completing her nursing degree at night. She didn’t seek to manifest Christ through toilet scrubbing but focused on earning money for education and supporting her children.
Carmen used work time efficiently, took breaks when needed, advocated with their supervisor for better supplies and safer cleaning chemicals. She didn’t view every circumstance as God-sent opportunity but as situations requiring practical responses and strategic planning.
When Maria developed chronic back pain from inadequate equipment and poor working conditions, her small group leader suggested she wasn’t truly embracing the spiritual opportunity. But Carmen helped Maria understand their rights as workers and connected her with a union representative who actually improved their working conditions.
Where was the knowledge of Christ that was supposed to come through reckless abandonment to circumstances? Where was the Holy Spirit manifesting Jesus through menial work?
Maria’s breakthrough came when she stopped trying to find Christ in exploitative work and started using her job strategically to fund her return to education. The meaningful purpose she sought didn’t come through spiritual sainthood but through treating work as means to achieve realistic goals.
The knowledge of Christ that actually sustained Maria came through her church’s social justice ministry, where she worked to improve conditions for low-wage workers—not through trying to spiritualize her own exploitation.
The silence where divine opportunity was supposed to manifest revealed the truth: there was no spiritual realization to be found in accepting exploitation as God-sent. Only strategic action and collective organizing that actually created change.
Reflection Question: When has treating work strategically rather than seeking spiritual meaning in all circumstances been more effective for achieving your goals?
This story is part of my upcoming book “The Undevoted: Daily Departures from Divine Dependence,” which offers 365 human-centered alternatives to the spiritual certainties in Chambers’ devotional. Each day explores how reason, community, and human resilience can address life’s challenges without requiring divine intervention.
God or Delusion? 