... About Making the Ordinary Extraordinary for Him?

As I am writing this morning, the US Soccer team is about to start their game against the Czech Republic. Forgive me if I seem a bit distracted.
- It’s not that I have a poor attention span; it’s just that right now someone named Donovan or Beasley could be making the most beautiful through pass and there could be a chance at a goal!
- It’s not like I can’t concentrate on more than one thing at a time, but look at that amazing save by Keller (Hey, I’m not watching by the way; I am at work. One word: TiVO)!
- It’s not like I don’t want to write something amazingly profound that will challenge and encourage my handful of loyal readers, you know who you three are! It’s just that soccer is my thing and this world game only comes around once every four years! My kids and I are cheering for the Americans (all the while having another team that we like as well – see earlier soccer post).

OK, here is the bit that I have trying unsuccessfully to write all morning:

The Christian life needs to be ordinary. There. I said it. I have been thinking it for a long time. Now it’s out there. Let me explain. I believe that a lot of Christians have bought into our Western culture’s fascination with the successful, the powerful, the beautiful, the amazing, and the extraordinary. Now granted, that is part of the reason this country was built into the amazing place that it is. I don’t doubt that. I want to address this enthrallment as it impacts my walk with Christ.

The Christian faith is lived out for the most part in a daily walk, one foot in front of the other, one common, everyday moment after another. Now, I do not doubt for a minute that many (myself included) have experienced spiritual highs and lows. But the bulk of time spent following Christ is in the run of the mill moments in between. Not in Sunday morning worship times, or in retreats that challenge us, or times of deep reflection. The Christian life is spent in those commonplace times. What do we do then? How do we live those moments? I think living faithfully during those times is one of the keys to living faithfully at those up and down times. It keeps us grounded in the ordinary. Here is more stuff from Darryl Tippens’ wonderful new book, Pilgrim Heart:

“The way of life taught in Scripture is quintessentially an active pilgrimage towards Jesus, characterized by many daily practices. Ours is a “symphonic piety,” as Richard Foster calls it: ‘The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic. If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we cannot find him at all. Ours is to be a symphonic piety in which all activities of work and play and family and worship and sleep are the holy habits of the eternal.’”

“Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, commonly known as Brother Lawrence, expresses a similar outlook, even finding God in the noisy kitchen where he was the cook: ‘The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.’”

“Human bodies, by their very nature, perform an almost infinite number of actions. They breathe, eat, sleep, shout, sing, pray, confess, cry, laugh, talk, listen, and so forth. Each is a part of the journey toward God.”

Let’s take back the ordinary parts of our lives for God, making whatever we do extraordinary because we are doing it for him!