The hymn is no longer familiar to the Christian public. Its form is rather old-fashioned and its mood foreign to the psychology of the busy believers who scurry about so nervously these days. Scarcely one in ten thousand of them would have the patience to read it if it were placed in their hands; yet its simple message is so wonderful that it should never be allowed to be lost. Rather it should be rescued from oblivion and given back to the sons of the kingdom as a precious treasure they can ill afford longer to neglect.

Today more than ever we Christians need to learn how to sanctify the ordinary. This is a blase generation. People have been over stimulated to the place where their nerves are jaded and their tastes corrupted. Natural things have been rejected to make room for things artificial. The sacred has been secularized, the holy vulgarized and worship converted into a form of entertainment. A dopey, bleary-eyed generation seeks constantly for some new excitement powerful enough to bring a thrill to its worn-out and benumbed sensibilities. So many wonders have been discovered or invented that nothing on earth is any longer wonderful. Everything is common and almost everything boring.

Like it or not, that is the world in which we find ourselves and we are charged with the responsibility to live soberly, righteously and godly right in the middle of it. The danger is that we allow ourselves to be too much affected by the degenerate tastes and low views of the Hittites and Jebusites among whom we dwell and so learn the ways of the nations, to our own undoing, as Israel did before us.

When the whole moral and psychological atmosphere is secular and common how can we escape its deadly effects? How can we sanctify the ordinary and find true spiritual meaning in the common things of life? The answer has already been suggested. It is to consecrate the whole of life to Christ and begin to do everything in His name and for His sake.

Fenelon teaches that to make our deeds acceptable to God it is not necessary that we change our occupation (if it is honest), but only that we begin to do for Christ's sake what we had formerly been doing for our own. To some of us this will seem too tame and ordinary. We want to do great things for God, to hazard our lives in dramatic acts of devotion that will attract the attention of fellow Christians and perhaps of the larger world outside. Visions of Huss at the stake, Luther at the Diet of Worms or Livingstone in the heart of Africa flit before our minds as we think on spiritual things. Plain, workaday Christians like us - how can we rise to such heroic heights? With our families to support, with our lot cast in the dull routine of the commonplace, with no one threatening us with imprisonment or death: how can we live lives acceptable to God? What can we do to satisfy the heart our Father in heaven?

The answer is near thee, even in thy mouth. Vacate the throne room of your heart and enthrone Jesus there. Set Him in the focus of your heart's attention and stop wanting to be a hero. Make Him your all in all and try yourself to become less and less. Dedicate your entire life to His honor alone and shift the motives of your life from self to God. Let the reason back of your daily conduct be Christ and His glory, not yourself, nor your family nor your country nor your church. In all things let Him have the preeminence.

All this seems too simple to be true, but Scripture and experience agree to declare that it is indeed the way to sanctify the ordinary. "For Thy sake" will rescue the little, empty things from vanity and give them eternal meaning. The lowly paths of routine living will by these words be elevated to the level of a bright highway. The humdrum of our daily lives will take on the quality of a worship service and the thousand irksome duties we must perform will become offerings and sacrifices acceptable to God by Christ Jesus.

To God there are no small offerings if they are made in the name of His Son. Conversely, nothing appears great to Him that is given for any other reason than for Jesus' sake. If we cannot die for Christ we can live for Him, and sometimes this is more heroic and will bring a larger reward.

"For Thy sake." These are the wondrous words which, when they are found in the heart as well as in the mouth, turn water into wine and every base metal into gold.