Ordinary Time
- May 29, 2016
- 2 min read
Pentecost is a long season. All summer long we’ll be in the season of Pentecost, at times referred to as “Ordinary Time.” I kind of like that. Ordinary Time. Just another day in the Kingdom of God! I wonder what that’s like.
We say God’s Kingdom is already but not yet. It’s here, all around us, but not fully realized. Does that mean we just don’t recognize it? Does that mean it’s here, unseen, like the air we breathe and the light by which we see though we cannot touch it or recognize it?
There’s no easy way to describe it. Perception varies by individuals, but it isn’t impossible to learn how to recognize it. That’s one of the promises of the gospel. For those who seek, finding will not be far behind. And it’s more recognizable still if we learn to recognize it together.
Ordinary time is the perfect time to become mindful of God’s Kingdom. During this long season, we explore the Bible together in all of its humanness and Godliness. We read and think about stories that happened long ago and we mull over how silly it is that we are still living them out. Same struggles, same insecurities, same misunderstandings, same attempts to sabotage the glorious, rebellious gospel so that it will agree with us! (Can you imagine? What kind of gospel seeks to agree with us?) Every little story is another page in that long conversation with God begun thousands of years ago and continuing on long after the last page of the Bible has been read.
It is in Ordinary Time that we catch glimpses of our own stories joining with those that have gone before. Like streams and creeks that become rivers and oceans, our stories and our lives join those of others and because it is Ordinary Time, we are allowed to slow down and become mindful of one another and of God with us.
Maybe that is what Ordinary Time is for. We are not caught in the amber of God’s Kingdom, but we are moving and growing and dynamic parts of it. It is when things are flowing past and swirling about that we may come to see it. Slowly at first, but over time, might we begin to see God’s Kingdom in the smallest of things? Ordinary things. Wouldn’t that be a wonder in and of itself? To be able to see God’s glory in the smallest, ordinary things?
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