Ordinary

Ordinary.
Shoes
Is there such a thing?
I’m tempted to think so.
In the midst of the dishes and laundry and cleaning toilets, snotty noses and bedtime stories, the routine can seem mundane, dull…
Ordinary.
Until I really look. Until I really stop. Until I really see what is around me.
Nothing is ordinary.
Messy kitchen
Those dishes mean a miracle of earth producing food that can be purchased and eaten at our table.
Laundry
That laundry means a miracle of cotton growing from the ground and being woven into fabric that keeps our bodies warm in this cold winter.
Toilet
This filthy toilet means an act of service, a deliberate dying to myself in a beautiful sacrifice for my family.
Sad baby
Those snotty noses mean a miracle of beautiful, sturdy bodies that are growing so very quickly.
Bedtime story
These bedtime stories mean a miracle of imagination, of minds that eagerly search for and grasp new meanings and ideas every day.
These very things that seem so ordinary are the very fabric of the miracle that is my life.
The Christian faith does not simply, or even mainly, propose a few additional facts about the world.  Rather, belief in the Christian God invites a new way to understand everything. ~ Andrew Davison in Imaginative Apologetics
Because all is created, because all is love, than nothing is ordinary. Everything is sacred.
I cannot separate my life into ordinary parts and miraculous parts, into secular parts and sacred parts.
Without Christ, nothing was made that has been made. In Christ, all things hold together.
No matter what surrounds you, it is not ordinary, it is not solely of this world.
No matter how tempted I am to name something as mundane, as secular, it is not so.
Nothing that God has created is ordinary.
New Family
All is miracle. All is sacred.
There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation. ~ Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water

4 thoughts on “Ordinary

  1. I wrote a post recently where I described my marriage as being gorgeously ordinary….I appreciate how you take that concept further, broadening it, so that it creeps ever so softly to the sacred. yes! Thanks for sharing.

  2. Love this! You have a such a gift of writing Elizabeth! I’ve been house cleaning today and this is just what I needed to read! Love the pics of your beautiful family. Your sweet baby girl is PRECIOUS!!! Love those cheeks! You are such a wonderful mama and encourager to so many other mamas!!! Thank you! Love, your Arkansas cousin : )

    • Ah, house cleaning. I’ll have to re-read my own words each time I do it! 🙂 Thanks for your encouraging words, sweet cuz! Love, your Illinois cousin. 🙂

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