Ordinary. That’s a boring word, isn’t it? Monotonous. Monochrome. Bland. Everyone around is always trying to get us to break free from the ordinary. Everything must be extraordinary all the time. Of course, when everything is extraordinary, nothing is. Consequently, there is a constant longing and search for the next great thing. This is a fool’s errand that leads to discontent frustration. The person who is joyful is the person who can learn to be content in the ordinary.
The Church Year has two seasons that help train us to live in the ordinary. They are called, oddly enough, “Ordinary Time.” The origin of the word is not what we understand as “ordinary,” by which we mean mundane. Ordinary time is named thus because it is marked by ordinal numbers: first, second, third, etc. These are the Sundays after Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost (or Trinity).
While originally not intended to speak of the mundane, there is a delicious ambiguity in calling these seasons “Ordinary Time.” These are times when there are no spectacular redemptive events. These are the days and years between Jesus’ birth and his appearance at the temple at age twelve; the days and years between age twelve and his baptism at age thirty. These are those day-to-day travels with the disciples not recorded in Scripture where they talked, ate, drank, prayed, and attended synagogue on the Sabbath. This is the church settling in after Pentecost and its effects over the next several years and moving from daily worship to a more fixed weekly worship. The spectacular, extraordinary events laid the foundation for settling into ordinary life.
“Ordinary” doesn’t mean that God ceases to work. God is always working to sustain all things that he has created. He upholds all things by the word of his power (Heb 1.3). Every sunrise and sunset, every oxygen molecule that keeps you alive, all the “constants” that keep life stable and somewhat predictable are because God is sustaining them. This is what theologians call God’s ordinary providence.
We are mistaken when we think that if spectacular things aren’t happening in church every Sunday or in our day-to-day lives that God is not working. We can become extraordinary junkies, needing a fix of greater emotional experiences, dissatisfied with routine, restless spirits always seeking a new high. Ordinary time trains us in the discipline of seeing God in the mundane and delighting in his steady faithfulness. A deep understanding of God’s work in everyday life provides the foundation for gratitude for the ordinary.
With a deep appreciation of the ordinary comes all sorts of wonderful fruits that many in the culture and the church lack desperately. Contentment, that which many seek but never find through their thrill-chasing, is borne by the tree that has its roots growing deep in the soil of gratitude for God’s ordinary providence. Hanging right next to the fruit of contentment is joy. When you are not always chasing after the next bigger and better thrill, you are not constantly disappointed because of your lack of gratification. The tree upon which this fruit hangs is faith. You are relying upon God’s word even when you aren’t seeing God doing spectacular things. Ordinary Time is a time for the seeds planted in the extraordinary seasons of the year to take root and grow.
Between now and Advent we have twenty-four weeks. (This varies from year to year.) That is almost half of the year taken up with Ordinary Time. This is a time to enjoy the rhythms of daily and weekly life, to learn to appreciate God’s moment-by-moment, day-by-day, week-by-week faithfulness in providing for and sustaining us. I encourage you to take the time to stop, focus, and give thanks for all those particular ordinary blessings in your life: day and night, every heartbeat, every breath, the peculiarities of your life and family, daily food, weekly worship, and the myriads of other ordinary blessings you experience. As you do, you may find yourself to be more content and joyful.
