“THE SPECTACULAR ORDINARY” – Jan 28
January 28, 2014“The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.” Exodus 12:28
My calendar contains much anticipation. Days are designated for future purposes, months in advance. Yesterday, I took my kids snow skiing. It was an event that occupied a spot on my calendar for months.
However, calendars never seem to diminish of special days and obligations. Even while my children and I were sliding down snow covered mountain sides, my wife registered my son for his next NCFCA speech and debate tournament. One special day was replaced by another.
I understand that this experience is merely a result of living in an organized and responsible manner. However, a fixation on future special days can steal the exceptional from the intervening days of ordinary. That is a great loss.
The ordinary typifies the children of God. Consider how long the descendants of Abraham resided in Egypt. Centuries pasted from the time Joseph welcomed his father and brothers to Egypt to the time Moses came to lead them to the Promised Land.
The Bible is silent about these intervening years but that does not mean God was not at work. He created a nation in those silent years. A family came into Egypt and after 430 years of ordinary, a nation left. That is pretty special.
God still creates the special in our ordinary.
God sanctifies us in the day-in and day-out of the ordinary. It is through the reliance upon Him in the mundane that the Spirit transforms our hearts by an imperceptible degree or two.
God draws our children to Himself through the faithful everyday examples of parent and grandparent who are living a real and vibrant faith.
God is magnified before those who don’t know him by His followers’ unusual reactions to everyday difficulties.
God still builds for Himself a nation in the ordinary. He is doing it today as I prepare to go to work. He will be doing it today as my wife teaches our children. He will be on display as I respond to clients and coworkers. It will happen in the ordinary evening I spend with my family before I go to bed.
God will be doing glorious works throughout this very ordinary day.
May we not lose the blessings of the ordinary in our addiction to the spectacular.
PRAYER: Lord, thank you for all the special days that you have blessed my family and I with. Thank you for doing wonderful works in my life that have caused me to praise and draw close to you. Father, I equally thank you and am grateful for all the ordinary days that you have given me. Thank you for the spectacular work you will do in me and my family today even though I may scarcely notice it. Thank you for the incremental transformations in my life that you are continually blessing me with through these long ordinary day. Father, continue that work in my life and the lives of my family. Lord, open my eyes so that I never diminish your spectacular work in the ordinary. I pray this in the precious name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
A DEVOTED LIFE 
Those seemingly ordinary times in our lives can be so filled with blessings, if only we look for them rather than letting them get away from us.
A very nice prayer. Sometimes we don’t appreciate the ordinary things enough. God Bless You and thanks for your support, always.
‘Love the title, JD–a fun oxymoron! Also appreciate this reminder: “God will be doing glorious works throughout this ordinary day.” Oh, yes. All day long our senses take in dozens of gifts to enjoy. Praise God for his loving kindness! Thank you, JD, for another meaningful post!
I really liked this post. One of my most special memories is a quite “ordinary” one from almost 30 years ago…I was watching my son, aged about 3, as he sat down to his breakfast cereal, alone in the otherwise empty dining room, and presumably unobserved. He bowed his head to say a blessing on his food, but a mere second later raised his head. I thought to myself, “Wow, that was a quick prayer!” only to then observe him remove his baseball cap from his head and bow his head again in prayer. My eyes welled up with tears as I saw the faith, respect and reverence this little child expressed in this simple action. I treasured it up in my heart.
On old Christian calendars there were periods during the year called periods of Ordinary Time. They are kept on the calendars of some of the older traditions even today. It really marks the times of the year when no major season is being celebrated like the Christmas Season or the Easter Season…when we are doing those extraordinary things you were speaking about…but I found this great quote about ordinary time which I thought “fit so well” with your message!
“Ordinary Time is the part of the year in which Christ, the Lamb of God, walks among us and transforms our lives. That’s why there’s nothing “ordinary” about Ordinary Time.”
Thanks again for another great reminder that God is at work in our lives in the extraordinary times and the ordinary times….
I am such a lover of God in the mundane and the seemingly ordinary. I love that He is alive and active in every moment of my life, whether in the big, the small or the miniscule. And I always say, as a Christian, that not much has changed…people still die around me, my car may still get stolen, my house get burgled or burnt down and i may lose my job and have no money or simply, my washing machine may flood my kitchen but, it is my reaction to those things that has changed DRAMATICALLY!
So to read “God is magnified before those who don’t know him by His followers’ unusual reactions to everyday difficulties”…was simply wonderful!
God bless you for this encouragement to the Body.
I used to equate the mundane with being boring, something to resist. With age I have realized that it is in the mundane stretches of life that God is more likely to open my eyes and ears to spiritual truths I would otherwise have missed. Praise Him for His mysterious ways!