The Significance of the Ordinary

I try to be intentional about reflecting on major Christian holidays. Often, my best reflection comes after the holiday has already passed. Easter is no exception. This year, I gained new thoughts on the realities of Easter, the life of Jesus, and how it all applies to our lives.

Every Easter, my wife and I listen to the same song, “Was it a Morning Like This?,” by Sandi Patti. As the lyrics played in my head, I thought, “it was a morning like this.” The morning of the resurrection was an ordinary morning made extraordinary by the power of God in a unique way.

This made me realize how God, often, infuses the ordinary with the power of His Spirit in order to accomplish His purposes. Consider the events surrounding the life and ministry of Jesus: He was born into an ordinary family in the most humble of places, nothing special about his birth at all. He chose ordinary men as His disciples, lived a simple life, and often performed miraculous wonders using ordinary means. He used clay pots, mud and spittle mixed together, an ordinary lunch for a boy, simple words, or a small touch to accomplish His ministry to others. Everything about Jesus was unique, extraordinary, mind-blowing, beyond explanation, and transformational, yet at the same time, this One who is fully God and fully man, was immersed in the ordinary.

Since Easter, I have been reflecting on how Jesus is present in the ordinary, and how He uses the ordinary things of this world to be vessels of His extraordinary power and glory. It makes me realize that I need to look into the ordinary moments of life to make sure I do not miss the extraordinary aspects of God. This realization also gives me hope that maybe God can use my ordinary life for His extraordinary purposes. An ordinary life surrendered and available to God has extraordinary possibilities!