Here in Ordinary Time
With churches all over the world, we have just made one of the big turns of the church year: from the Easter season into “Ordinary Time.” It’s a funny phrase, isn’t it? What does that make the other parts of the year? Sacred time? Special time? Extraordinary time?
Ordinary Time is this great span of time from Pentecost Sunday all the way to Advent–a long stretch when we shift our focus from those big events in the year (Christmas and Easter) to the less “remarkable” parts of the story. In worship, we’ll hear parables and teachings of Jesus, we’ll read stories of healings and feedings: ordinary compassion and grace, the stuff of daily life.
This is part of the rhythm of the church year, and I think it’s true to life as well: we mark some time as sacred, some as ordinary, and in the process, we learn that the two go together. In the love of our God who took on human life, we see that the ordinary is made sacred, and the sacred ordinary: we bump up against the Holy God in the ordinary experiences of friendship and family, time in community and time in solitude, time in service and time in prayer.
May we be open to those everyday experiences of grace this season. Welcome to Ordinary Time.
Pastor Andy