Christmas arrives with angels, shepherds, candles, carols, and enough poinsettias to suggest that the Church has somehow acquired a controlling interest in the greenhouse industry.
Easter comes with lilies, trumpets, Alleluias, and the astonishing proclamation that death itself has been defeated.
Pentecost brings wind and fire.
All Saints gives us the great communion of those who have gone before us.
And then there is Wednesday.
Wednesday seldom arrives with trumpets.
Nobody wakes up on an ordinary Wednesday morning and says, “At last! Wednesday! I have been preparing spiritually for this moment for weeks.”
Wednesday simply appears.
There is coffee to make. Laundry to fold. Emails to answer. Groceries to buy. Meetings to attend. A dog wants walking. The car has developed a noise which everyone in the family has agreed to ignore until it either disappears or becomes financially significant.
And somewhere in the middle of all that ordinary living, God is present.
That may be one of the most important spiritual lessons we ever learn.
The Great Spiritual Temptation
We have a remarkable ability to imagine that real life is always about to begin.
Once this difficult week is over.
Once the children are settled.
Once the mortgage is paid.
Once retirement comes.
Once the renovation is finished.
Once Christmas is over.
Once things calm down.
That last one is particularly charming.
“Once things calm down” may be one of the great fictional phrases of Western civilization. It belongs somewhere alongside unicorns, perpetual-motion machines, and the belief that one can enter Costco for a single item.
Things rarely calm down.
Life simply changes its particular form of commotion.
And if we spend our lives waiting for the circumstances in which we can finally begin paying attention to God, we may discover that we have spent most of our lives waiting.
Scripture offers another possibility.
Again and again, God meets people while they are doing remarkably ordinary things.
Moses is tending sheep.
Gideon is threshing wheat.
Ruth is gathering leftover grain.
David is looking after his father’s flock.
Peter and Andrew are fishing.
Matthew is sitting at his tax booth.
Mary is simply living her life in Nazareth when an angel appears and announces that the history of creation is about to turn upon her answer.
God seems remarkably unconcerned about waiting until everyone has cleared their calendars.
The Sacrament of the Ordinary
Perhaps we need to recover something that earlier generations of Christians understood instinctively: ordinary life can become sacramental.
I do not mean that washing dishes has secretly become an eighth sacrament and nobody remembered to inform the bishops.
I mean that the ordinary things of life can become places through which grace is encountered.
A meal prepared for someone you love.
A telephone call made to someone who has been lonely.
A door held open.
A garden put to bed for winter.
A prayer whispered while driving to work.
A cup of tea carried to someone who has had a difficult day.
A moment when we choose patience instead of irritation.
A decision to listen rather than immediately preparing our reply.
None of these things will appear in the history books.
There will probably be no plaque.
Future generations are unlikely to gather around the kitchen sink and say, “It was here, on this very spot, that Margaret washed the casserole dish without complaining.”
And yet heaven may understand such moments differently.
Jesus once said that even a cup of cold water given in love matters in the Kingdom of God.
That is an astonishingly small thing.
A cup of water.
Apparently God has a rather different accounting system from ours.
We count achievements.
God notices love.
Saints Are Mostly Made on Wednesdays
We are moving through these quiet weeks toward All Saints’ Day.
Soon the Church will remember apostles and martyrs, teachers and missionaries, mystics and reformers. We will sing about the saints who “toiled and fought and lived and died.”
And rightly so.
But sometimes the great saints can seem impossibly heroic.
They crossed oceans.
Founded monasteries.
Faced persecution.
Fed thousands.
Confronted kings.
Meanwhile, some of us are simply trying to remember where we left our reading glasses.
But sanctity is rarely constructed entirely from heroic moments.
It is built through thousands of ordinary choices.
A little forgiveness here.
A little courage there.
A prayer offered when prayer feels difficult.
A kindness nobody notices.
A temptation resisted.
A neighbour welcomed.
A hungry person fed.
A grudge finally released.
A truth spoken gently.
A mistake admitted.
A little more generosity than seemed entirely sensible.
This is how holiness grows.
Slowly.
Quietly.
Ordinarily.
The saints whom we celebrate on November 1 were not saints only when something dramatic was happening.
They became saints through Wednesdays.
The Hidden Life of Jesus
It is worth remembering how little we know about most of Jesus’ earthly life.
The Gospels tell us a great deal about approximately three years of his public ministry.
But Jesus lived for roughly thirty years before that.
Thirty years.
Nazareth.
Family.
Work.
Neighbours.
Meals.
Sabbaths.
Wood.
Tools.
Dust.
Ordinary conversations.
Ordinary responsibilities.
We know almost nothing about those years.
And perhaps that silence itself teaches us something.
God did not consider those years wasted.
The Word became flesh not merely for sermons, miracles, and the cross.
The Word became flesh and lived a human life.
Jesus knew what it meant to wake up on an ordinary morning.
He knew work.
He knew family.
He knew neighbours.
He knew tiredness.
He knew meals around tables.
He knew the thousand small obligations from which human life is woven.
Christian faith therefore does not ask us to escape ordinary life in order to find God.
It teaches us to look more carefully.
Pay Attention
Perhaps that is the invitation of these weeks between Thanksgiving and All Saints.
Pay attention.
The trees are changing.
The mornings are becoming colder.
Gardens are emptying.
Leaves are gathering in corners with a determination suggesting that they have organized themselves into committees.
The year is turning.
And your life is happening.
Not next month.
Not once things settle down.
Not when you finally become the person you think you ought to be.
Now.
This Wednesday.
This kitchen.
This conversation.
This neighbour.
This meal.
This prayer.
This moment.
God is here.
And holiness may be much closer than we imagine.
Perhaps the spiritual task of Ordinary Time is not to make our lives extraordinary.
Perhaps it is to discover that a life lived attentively, gratefully, faithfully, and lovingly before God was never ordinary in the first place.
The Kingdom of God has always had a remarkable affection for small things.
Mustard seeds.
Yeast.
Coins.
Bread.
Cups of water.
And ordinary people learning, one ordinary day at a time, how to love.
So do not underestimate Wednesday.
Heaven may be doing considerably more with it than we realize.
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Companion Prayer
Gracious God,
open my eyes to your presence in the ordinary moments of this day.
When I am tempted to hurry toward something more important, remind me that this moment is already held within your grace.
Teach me to recognize holiness in small kindnesses, quiet conversations, daily work, shared meals, and simple acts of love.
Give me the attentiveness to notice you, the gratitude to receive this day as gift, and the courage to live it faithfully.
For no day is ordinary when it is lived in your presence.
Amen.