O is for Ordinary

 

Ordinary used to feel like a place holder, like a filler between big life updates, the breakthroughs, the milestones or the moments that make good testimonies.

But the longer I live, the more I realize, ordinary is where most of life actually happens. It’s morning tea, diving into God’s word, feeding the dog, packing lunch and heading out the door to work. It’s walking into a classroom and getting my student to focus. It’s sitting by my husband at another doctor appointment, it’s holding hands without needing to say anything, and yet this is where love lives. Not in the grand gestures, but in the repeated ones. In folding laundry, driving him to another appointment. In the laughing at something totally inappropriate.

The world tells us to chase extraordinary, but God often meets us in the ordinary. Jesus didn’t build his ministry on stages and spot lights. Much of his life unfolded in small towns like Nazareth, around fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee, at dinner tables and dusty roads. Ordinary people, ordinary places and holy moments.

Maybe the miracle isn’t escaping an ordinary life, but seeing the miracles in it.

Maybe it’s in the way my dog greets me at the door like he hadn’t seen me in weeks, maybe it’s in my grandchild’s droopy, sticky fingers, offering me a soggy cracker. Maybe it’s face timing with the grandkids, who show me every toy they’ve ever owned, or have an over abundance of silliness just to make me laugh. These things may seem ordinary to others, maybe even those reading this, but they are nothing but ordinary to me.

This life stitched together with routine and repetition (like ground hog’s day) is not small. Ordinary is where character is built. Where faith is sometimes tested. Where love proves itself without applause.

So O is for ordinary. Because this A-Z story of mine isn’t built on grand moments. It’s built on quiet ones. When the alphabet of my life is written out in full, I have a feeling the ordinary days will be the ones that mattered the most.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart. As working for the Lord, not for human masters.”