There is a peculiar pressure attached to ordinary days.
Christmas is allowed to be Christmas. Easter is permitted trumpets, lilies, and theological extravagance. Thanksgiving arrives carrying enough food to provision a moderately sized monastery. Even All Saints gets candles, hymns, and the comforting reminder that the Church is considerably larger than the people who remembered to come last Sunday.
But an ordinary Thursday in October?
Thursday is expected to be productive.
It must justify itself.
There should be emails answered, appointments kept, laundry folded, errands completed, meetings attended, leaves raked, groceries purchased, and preferably something crossed off a list with sufficient force to suggest moral victory.
We have become remarkably skilled at measuring the value of a day by what we managed to accomplish in it.
And I am beginning to wonder whether God keeps quite the same accounting system.
The Theology of the Checklist
I like lists.
There is something deeply satisfying about writing down six things you need to accomplish and then adding a seventh thing you have already done simply so you can cross it off immediately.
This may not technically be spiritual growth, but it feels very much like it.
The difficulty begins when our lists quietly become a measurement of our worth.
A productive day becomes a good day.
An unproductive day becomes a wasted day.
And before long, we begin applying the same arithmetic to ourselves.
I accomplished much today; therefore I mattered.
I accomplished little today; therefore perhaps I did not.
That is a dangerous theology.
The Gospel tells a very different story.
Jesus certainly worked. He taught. He healed. He travelled. He fed crowds. He confronted injustice. He proclaimed the Kingdom.
But Jesus also stopped.
He withdrew to lonely places.
He sat beside wells.
He ate long meals.
He went to weddings.
He welcomed children who were quite clearly interrupting the programme.
He allowed people to delay him.
He noticed birds.
He pointed out flowers.
And occasionally, when everyone else was panicking, Jesus went to sleep.
This is not the behaviour of a man trying to maximize quarterly productivity.
Jesus appears to have understood something we frequently forget:
A human life is not a machine designed to produce measurable outcomes.
It is a life designed for communion.
With God.
With neighbour.
With creation.
With ourselves.
Perhaps the Day Was Doing Something to You
We usually ask at the end of the day:
“What did I accomplish?”
Perhaps there is another question worth asking:
“What happened to me today?”
Did I become slightly more patient?
Did I notice someone who needed encouragement?
Did I laugh?
Did I listen?
Did I forgive?
Did I receive forgiveness?
Did I notice the maple tree outside the window turning a colour no respectable tree ought to be able to produce?
Did I sit quietly for five minutes without attempting to improve anything?
Did I remember that God existed before my alarm clock rang and will continue managing the universe after I go to bed?
These things do not appear on many productivity charts.
Heaven may nevertheless regard them as significant.
There are days when grace accomplishes very little that can be photographed, reported, measured, or entered into a spreadsheet.
Grace simply changes us.
Usually slowly.
Often invisibly.
And almost always while we are busy looking for something more impressive.
The Ministry of the Unremarkable
This season between Thanksgiving and All Saints is filled with precisely these sorts of days.
The turkey has disappeared.
The pumpkins are still respectable.
Christmas has begun lurking suspiciously in the retail establishments but has not yet been given liturgical permission to come indoors.
And the Church continues walking through Ordinary Time.
There is something wonderfully theological about that.
Christianity is not principally a religion for extraordinary moments.
It is a way of inhabiting ordinary ones.
We believe that God became flesh.
Not occasionally flesh.
Not ceremonial flesh.
Not Sunday-morning-between-ten-and-eleven-fifteen flesh.
Flesh.
Human life itself became the dwelling place of God.
Which means the ordinary materials of our lives—the kitchen table, the commute, the telephone call, the dog walk, the grocery store, the conversation over coffee—are capable of becoming places of encounter.
Not because we make them holy.
Because God is already there.
Our task is mostly to notice.
The Holiness of Enough
Perhaps one of the spiritual disciplines we need most is learning to say:
“That was enough for today.”
Not every problem was solved.
Not every email was answered.
Not every leaf was raked.
Indeed, given the enthusiasm of Canadian trees in October, leaf-raking is less a task than an existential condition.
You rake the lawn.
You admire your work.
You go inside for coffee.
The trees hold a brief committee meeting.
And when you return, apparently nothing has happened.
There is wisdom in accepting that some things will remain unfinished.
We are unfinished creatures living unfinished lives in an unfinished world.
And yet God loves us now.
Not when the list is completed.
Not when the house is immaculate.
Not when the parish is perfect.
Not when the inbox finally reaches zero—a theological state whose existence I increasingly doubt.
Now.
Grace does not wait for completion.
Grace meets us in the middle.
Before You Go to Bed Tonight
So perhaps tonight, rather than conducting an audit of everything you failed to accomplish, try something different.
Think of three moments from the day.
Nothing spectacular.
A conversation.
A cup of coffee.
A patch of sunlight.
Someone laughing.
A kindness received.
A kindness offered.
A moment when you stopped hurrying long enough to realize you were alive.
And simply say:
“Thank you.”
That may be prayer enough.
Because perhaps the spiritual achievement of an ordinary day is not that we conquered it.
Perhaps it is simply that we inhabited it.
We were there.
God was there.
And somewhere among the unfinished chores, unanswered messages, cooling cups of coffee, falling leaves, interruptions, laughter, mistakes, meals, and moments of unexpected beauty, grace quietly went about its work.
Which means that even on the days when you did not accomplish very much at all, something holy may still have been accomplished in you.
And that seems to me a very good use of a Thursday.
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Companion Prayer
Gracious God,
Thank you for the gift of this ordinary day.
Release me from the need to measure my life only by what I accomplish. Teach me to notice your presence in the interruptions, conversations, quiet moments, unfinished tasks, and unexpected gifts that fill my days.
When I am busy, slow me down.
When I am weary, give me rest.
When I am distracted, help me notice.
When I feel I have accomplished too little, remind me that my worth does not depend upon my productivity, but upon your love.
Give me grace to receive this day rather than conquer it, and wisdom to know when enough really is enough.
And when evening comes, whether the day feels full or unfinished, may I look back upon it and simply say:
Thank you.
Amen.