in praise of the ordinary

ordinary
extraordinary
What makes the difference?

Are we to live ordinary lives - be ordinary people - do ordinary things?

What is ordinary, anyway?

Most of us live what could be called ordinary lives. We are those ordinary people doing those ordinary things.

Most of us are not Elijahs or Jacobs or Johns or Pauls. Most of us don't go around the world speaking to millions. Most of us are not even known by the folks who live around the corner and down two blocks - unless our kids know their kids.

We build houses and live in them; we plant gardens and eat the fruit and pick the flowers; we have dogs and cats, gold fish and parakeets, horses and chickens.

We marry and have babies; go to work; go to school; grow up and grow old. We laugh, cry, rejoice and moan. All common. All usual. All normal - and ordinary.

Common - average - usual - middling - standard - normal lives.

What if the ordinary could be something more? Is meant to be something more? Something other than hum-drum and ho-hum?

There's a song that talks about wanting to 'breathe the air like I'm meant to on ordinary days and see the things that I'm supposed to see on ordinary days.'

What if our ordinary days are meant to be extra-ordinary days?

Because He is right here with us, filling each day and each minute with Himself, the ordinary becomes a beautiful golden gift to us of Life - a golden cup containing Him.

The divine is with us transforming the mundane - the average, common, every-day day - into the kingdom of God - at hand - in us - with us.

Oh, let us see the things You desire to show us, let us breathe the air You have for us.

Let us live ordinary days and lives made exquisitely extraordinary - because of You.