On Loving the Ordinary
It hardly makes our Instagram feeds or Facebook pages, but we spend most of our time living in the in-between, the ordinary, the mundane moments of life. We trudge through our work weeks to get a break on the weekends.
We plow through the day to celebrate and kick back at night.
But what about the time in between? Do the moments and days between the big moments count for anything?
In them, we work, manage our households, provide for ourselves and our families, build friendships, create a life for ourselves, and try to keep all our ducks in a row. Those are the days filled with washing dishes, cooking dinner, packing lunches, washing laundry, mopping floors, wiping runny noses, reading bedtime stories, filing reports, checking emails, and running errands.
They are the ordinary days, the regular rhythms of our lives.
We don’t give these regular spaces much value but view them as the mindless path to the more important and productive times in our day. But more and more I see that these routines, chores and daily times of transition are the liminal spaces where we can meet God.
We need not separate the sacred from the ordinary, the “quiet times” and church attendance from our vacuuming and showering. Jesus showed up with a body that ate, slept, walked, built, taught. He told life-changing stories in fields and by mountains, shared truth around tables and while he washed feet. He listened and obeyed the Spirit at every small turn, trusting in the Father to accomplish His will through Him, step by step, person by person, meal by meal. - Aimee Kollmansberger
Did you catch that? We don't have to separate the sacred from the ordinary. Every moment is sacred. Especially when you consider we don't know how many more we'll have.
There is beauty in a well-made meal, time spent with friends and family, a quiet evening alone, a project well done, a quick break to breathe deep, a brief message to encourage a friend, a doodle, a good book, art, and anything that makes us laugh.
We belittle the small moments when we discount their ability to bring us joy. When we rush through them toward the few and far between big things, we don't do the small moments justice.
They provide the safety and predictability of rhythm when other things get too chaotic. And the simplicity and beauty of them hold so much beauty and joy.
They are the very things that keep us grounded. They fill up our lives in seemingly small ways, but when we look back, we'll see that they were everything. They're our normal, our solid ground, our home base.
We could be living lives that are more consistently joyful if we took just a moment to pause and realize the amazing potential our daily lives have for bringing us joy in seemingly small but noticeable ways.
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