The Ordinary Extraordinary Life

Author: Dave Beroth

When you read or hear the word “ordinary”, how do you respond? Does it inspire you to finally tackle things on your to-do list?

This unexciting word “ordinary” comes from the Latin, suggesting something regular, something according to order.

Did you know there is a season called “ordinary time” in the traditional church year? It begins the Sunday after Pentecost. Why would the church recognize something that seems tiresome and uninspiring?

“Ordinary time” is the time after the fire has fallen and tongues have ceased, after the church’s birthday party is over, after the series of festivals in the church year have been completed. And “ordinary time” continues until we begin these festivals again starting with Advent in late November or early December.

That makes “ordinary time,” take up about half a year of Sundays. But that sounds about right as someone has put it, “life is so daily.”

This “dailiness” of life can seem so mundane, so routine, so non-spectacular that you risk missing something big God is doing. He doesn’t only work during exciting times and festive seasons.

Richard Foster, in his book on prayer writes: “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 will not find Him at all,” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p.171).

What truth do you hold to in the ordinary time?

Keep listening to God through Scripture. It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that every Bible study or devotional time should have a “goose bump” experience – angels singing, a sense of peace and being moved to tears.

When people tell me they struggle to connect with God during their devotional time, I encourage them to keep reading the Scriptures regularly. A steady pattern is what is important.

Read for what you do not know.

Connect what‘s going on in your life and study it for application.

Mark it for future needs.

A steady pattern helps you lock away truths that you can bring forward when you need them.

Although God sometimes goes unperceived, He is not inactive. Don’t miss the supernatural because you’re looking for the spectacular.