There are certain moments in life when one feels remarkably close to God.
Standing beside a quiet lake at sunrise.
Hearing a beloved hymn sung beautifully.
Receiving bread and wine at the altar.
Watching autumn sunlight come through the trees.
And then there are other moments.
Like discovering that the garbage should have gone to the curb twenty minutes ago.
Or standing in the kitchen wondering why every horizontal surface has somehow acquired three objects that do not belong there.
Or opening the laundry basket and discovering that, although you distinctly remember doing laundry quite recently, the clothes have apparently been reproducing.
These moments rarely make it into books about spirituality.
Perhaps they should.
Because one of the great discoveries of the Christian life is that God does not confine holiness to the obviously holy places.
God is quite capable of meeting us beside the laundry basket.
The Spirituality of Getting On With It
We live in a culture that is fascinated with extraordinary things.
Extraordinary experiences.
Extraordinary achievements.
Extraordinary people.
Even the Church occasionally falls into this habit. We tell the stories of saints who crossed oceans, founded monasteries, confronted kings, cared for thousands, and occasionally got themselves martyred in circumstances that make attending the parish council meeting seem comparatively manageable.
And these stories matter.
But most Christian lives are not lived on that scale.
Most of us will spend considerably more time washing dishes than confronting emperors.
We will answer emails.
Make lunches.
Pay bills.
Rake leaves.
Drive someone to an appointment.
Change light bulbs.
Sit beside someone who is lonely.
Make soup.
Take the garbage out.
And perhaps the great spiritual danger is imagining that these things happen in the intervals between the important parts of life.
They don’t.
They are life.
And therefore they are precisely the places where God intends to meet us.
Jesus Knew About Ordinary Things
One of the things I love about Jesus is how thoroughly his teaching is filled with everyday life.
Bread.
Seeds.
Coins.
Fishing nets.
Sheep.
Vineyards.
Dinner tables.
Children.
Housework.
Jesus apparently believed that the Kingdom of God could be explained using things people encountered before lunchtime.
That should tell us something.
The Kingdom of God is not merely waiting for us in some distant spiritual realm.
It is hidden among ordinary things.
A seed in the ground.
Bread on the table.
A neighbour at the door.
A person who needs mercy.
A task that needs doing.
Perhaps holiness is not always about escaping ordinary life.
Perhaps holiness is learning to inhabit ordinary life differently.
The Ministry Nobody Applauds
There is an enormous amount of goodness in this world that receives absolutely no applause.
Someone remembers to call an elderly neighbour.
Someone stays late to put the chairs away.
Someone prepares food for a family going through a difficult week.
Someone quietly cleans the church kitchen after everyone else has gone home.
Someone notices that the toilet paper roll is empty and—without forming a committee, commissioning a feasibility study, or announcing the achievement on Facebook—simply replaces it.
This last example may represent an advanced stage of Christian maturity.
Much of the Kingdom of God is built this way.
Quietly.
Faithfully.
Without recognition.
Jesus once said that whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.
We tend to admire the “much.”
God seems remarkably interested in the “little.”
Because little acts accumulate.
A kindness here.
A prayer there.
A casserole delivered.
A door held open.
A difficult conversation handled gently.
A person forgiven.
A lonely person remembered.
None of these things will make the evening news.
But together they begin to look suspiciously like the Kingdom of God.
Ordinary Time Is Trying to Teach Us Something
Perhaps this is one reason I have grown to appreciate Ordinary Time.
It does not arrive with the drama of Christmas.
There are no angels.
No shepherds.
No wise men travelling across continents.
It does not carry the intensity of Holy Week or the great joy of Easter morning.
Ordinary Time simply keeps going.
Sunday after Sunday.
Green vestments.
Parables.
Discipleship.
Faithfulness.
Try again tomorrow.
Which, when you think about it, sounds rather like most of life.
There are seasons when God does something dramatic.
And thank God for them.
But much of Christian discipleship consists of getting up in the morning and trying once again to live as though the Gospel is true.
Love your neighbour.
Forgive somebody.
Tell the truth.
Share what you have.
Notice who is being left out.
Say your prayers.
Wash the dishes.
Repeat tomorrow.
It does not sound spectacular.
It sounds faithful.
And faithfulness may be one of the most underrated forms of holiness.
The Sacrament of Tuesday Afternoon
We sometimes imagine that our spiritual lives would flourish if only our circumstances were more favourable.
If life were quieter.
If the schedule were less crowded.
If the family were less complicated.
If the house were tidier.
If the phone would stop ringing.
If people would simply behave themselves.
This last hope has sustained clergy for centuries despite remarkably little supporting evidence.
But God does not wait for ideal circumstances.
Grace has always been rather comfortable with interruptions.
The incarnation itself is the astonishing declaration that God is willing to enter the mess.
Not a palace.
A stable.
Not perfect circumstances.
Human circumstances.
God comes into a world where meals must be prepared, children cry, neighbours argue, roofs leak, governments irritate people, and somebody has misplaced the hammer again.
And God says:
Here.
I will meet you here.
That changes things.
It means Tuesday afternoon can become holy ground.
So can the grocery store.
So can the kitchen sink.
So can the drive to work.
So can the conversation you were hoping to avoid.
So can the small kindness nobody else notices.
Perhaps Nothing Is Merely Ordinary
There is an old temptation in the spiritual life to divide the world into sacred things and ordinary things.
Church is sacred.
Prayer is sacred.
Scripture is sacred.
Everything else is merely life.
But Christianity refuses to leave the world divided quite so neatly.
We believe in incarnation.
God took flesh.
God entered time.
God ate meals and walked roads and attended weddings and sat at tables.
Which means the ordinary world has been permanently disturbed by grace.
The kitchen table may be an altar of hospitality.
The telephone may become an instrument of compassion.
The garden may become a school of patience.
The hospital waiting room may become a chapel.
The laundry basket may become—
Well.
Let us not get carried away.
But even there, perhaps, love can be practised.
And that may be enough.
The Things That Need Doing
There will probably be something today that needs doing.
Something unimpressive.
Something inconvenient.
Something nobody will congratulate you for doing.
Do it with love.
There may be someone who needs your attention.
Give it generously.
There may be a small opportunity to be patient, forgiving, kind, or courageous.
Take it.
Because the Christian life is rarely built from one enormous heroic decision.
It is built from thousands of small ones.
And somewhere among those dishes, conversations, errands, prayers, phone calls, meals, appointments, interruptions, and unfinished lists, something remarkable happens.
A life slowly begins to resemble Christ.
Not dramatically.
Not perfectly.
But faithfully.
And perhaps that is the quiet miracle Ordinary Time has been trying to teach us all along:
Nothing done with love is merely ordinary.
Not the prayer.
Not the meal.
Not the kindness.
Not the task.
Not even taking out the garbage.
Although if you hear the truck coming down the street, I would suggest that theological reflection can wait.
Go.
Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.