There is a particular kind of disappointment that comes after a feast day.
The banners come down. The trumpets go back into their cases. The casserole dishes are returned to their rightful cupboards, which immediately forget having ever been tidy.
And then — green.
Not the dramatic purple of penitence, nor the jubilant white of angels doing overtime, but green. The colour of lawns that need mowing and vestments that rarely get their own Instagram post. Ordinary Time. The season when God, having waved enthusiastically from the mountaintop, slips his hands into his pockets and says, “Shall we walk?”
It is tempting to assume that when the great moments pass — the star, the voice from heaven, the water turned wine-coloured, the dramatic ta-da! — God must have stepped out for a coffee. Surely holiness thrives best on spectacle. Surely faith needs fireworks.
But Ordinary Time suggests something else entirely.
This is the season when Christ stops waving and starts walking.
Not striding ahead with a flag, not hovering above us with a glow and a soundtrack, but matching our pace. Ordinary pace. The speed of errands and conversations and second cups of tea. The pace of people who are figuring things out as they go.
This is the Jesus who walks the long way around. Who lingers. Who tells stories that take a while to land. Who seems in no particular hurry to wrap things up neatly. A Jesus who, rather inconveniently, appears to believe that transformation happens less in moments of astonishment and more in stretches of companionship.
Which may explain why Ordinary Time is so long.
We like our spiritual lives punctuated: big events, clear markers, unmistakable signs that something important has happened. God, on the other hand, appears to favour accumulation. A word here. A meal there. A habit slowly formed. A mercy practised so often it begins to feel normal — and then, only later, holy.
Ordinary Time insists that faith is not sustained by constant urgency. It grows the way gardens do: quietly, daily, and occasionally in ways we don’t notice until someone else points it out. Green is not boring. Green is resilient.
I’m sure we are all familiar with the statement that life is lived while we are making other plans. Ordinary Time gently corrects us: God is met there too. In the in-between. In the middle chapters. In the chapters without titles.
Christ walks with us when there is nothing left to celebrate, no crisis demanding prayer, no milestone requiring cake. He walks with us when the dishes still need doing, the emails still need answering, and holiness looks suspiciously like faithfulness.
And perhaps that is the point.
Ordinary Time is not the absence of God.
It is the presence of God without the need for announcement.
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A Companion Prayer
Gracious God,
When the banners come down and the songs quiet,
teach us to recognize you in the steady steps beside us.
When there is no crowd, no voice from heaven,
and nothing particularly impressive to report,
remind us that you are still here.
Give us patience for green seasons,
eyes to see slow growth,
and hearts willing to walk without needing to rush.
Stay with us in the middle chapters of our lives,
where faith is practised more than proclaimed,
and love is learned by repetition.
Walk with us today, O Christ—
not ahead of us, not above us,
but beside us,
until even the ordinary becomes a place of grace.
Amen.