The Holiness of Showing Up: Why God Keeps Meeting Us in the Same Old Places

There is a great deal to be said for showing up.

This is not, admittedly, one of the more glamorous spiritual disciplines.

Nobody has ever produced a glossy coffee-table book called Showing Up: Photographs of People Who Arrived When They Said They Would. There are very few stained-glass windows depicting someone putting on their coat because it is time to go to church. And I have yet to see a religious medal commemorating the heroic Christian virtue of getting out of bed when the alarm rings.

We prefer our spirituality with a little more drama.

We like conversion experiences. Mountaintops. Burning bushes. Visions in the night. Voices from heaven. Seas dramatically parting at precisely the right moment.

But most of the Christian life happens nowhere near a burning bush.

Most of it happens in kitchens.

And offices.

And hospital rooms.

And parish halls.

And grocery stores.

And in that mysterious place beside the front door where you were absolutely certain you left your keys.

Ordinary Time has a way of reminding us of this.

The great celebrations of Thanksgiving are behind us. All Saints is approaching, but it has not yet arrived. The trees are losing their leaves. The daylight is quietly packing its bags and leaving earlier every afternoon. Life settles again into its familiar rhythms.

And perhaps that is exactly where God wants to meet us.

The Spiritual Life Is Mostly Repetition

There is something wonderfully repetitive about Christianity.

We pray the same prayers.

We hear the same Scriptures.

We gather around the same table.

We say the same words.

“The Lord be with you.”

“And also with you.”

We confess our sins again, despite having confessed them quite sincerely last week.

We receive the bread and wine again.

We say Amen again.

Then we go home and attempt, with varying degrees of success, to live like people who meant what we just said.

And the following Sunday we come back and do it all again.

From the outside, this might look terribly inefficient.

Surely after two thousand years we ought to have finished by now.

But perhaps repetition is not evidence that Christianity has failed.

Perhaps repetition is how Christianity works.

Love itself is repetitive.

You do not tell someone you love them once and then consider the matter permanently settled.

You say it again.

You show it again.

You forgive again.

You listen again.

You make supper again.

You wash the dishes again, despite the deeply suspicious fact that everyone in the household appears determined to make them dirty again immediately.

Love lives by repetition.

So does faith.

God Seems Rather Fond of Ordinary Places

One of the persistent surprises of Scripture is how often God appears in places where nobody has prepared adequately for the occasion.

Moses is tending sheep.

Samuel is trying to sleep.

David is out in a field.

Mary is at home.

Peter is fishing.

The disciples are walking along a road.

The risen Christ appears beside a lake and cooks breakfast.

Apparently heaven is considerably less concerned with impressive venues than we are.

God keeps appearing in ordinary places.

Which means we may have spent far too much time waiting for extraordinary circumstances.

We imagine that when life becomes less complicated, we will pray more faithfully.

When work settles down, we will become more attentive.

When the family crisis passes, we will become more generous.

When we finally get ourselves organized, we will become the people God intended us to be.

This is a dangerous spiritual fantasy because life has shown remarkably little interest in becoming less complicated.

There is always another appointment.

Another bill.

Another disagreement.

Another laundry basket.

Another email beginning with the ominous phrase, “Just following up…”

If God intends to wait until our lives are perfectly arranged before meeting us, God may be waiting a very long time.

Fortunately, God appears to have made other arrangements.

God meets us now.

Faithfulness Is Usually Smaller Than We Imagine

We sometimes imagine faithfulness as something heroic.

And occasionally it is.

There are moments when discipleship demands courage that costs us something significant.

But most faithfulness is much smaller.

It is making the telephone call.

Visiting the person who is lonely.

Saying the prayer even when we do not particularly feel like praying.

Making room at the table.

Offering forgiveness before resentment becomes furniture.

Choosing kindness when sarcasm would have been considerably more entertaining.

Faithfulness often looks like doing the next loving thing.

Then doing another.

Then another.

This may not seem particularly impressive.

But neither does planting a seed.

The Kingdom of God, Jesus tells us, seems rather fond of seeds.

Small things placed faithfully into the earth.

Things that disappear before they grow.

Things that require patience.

Things whose transformation happens mostly where nobody can see it.

Perhaps much of holiness works the same way.

The Saints Mostly Kept Showing Up

All Saints Day is coming.

Soon we will remember the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.

We may imagine saints as people whose spiritual lives possessed a clarity ours does not.

But saints were human beings.

They became tired.

They became discouraged.

They occasionally misunderstood things.

They probably had mornings when prayer felt dry and afternoons when patience disappeared somewhere shortly after lunch.

Their holiness was not that they never struggled.

Their holiness was that they kept turning toward God.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Perhaps sainthood is not primarily about extraordinary spiritual achievement.

Perhaps it is about a lifetime of returning.

Returning to prayer.

Returning to mercy.

Returning to the table.

Returning to hope.

Returning to Christ.

There is something profoundly encouraging about that.

Because most of us can manage returning.

Just Come Back Tomorrow

There will be days when your prayers feel profound.

There will also be days when your prayers consist mostly of staring out the window while attempting to remember what you were praying about.

There will be Sundays when worship lifts your heart.

There will be Sundays when you find yourself wondering whether the person three pews ahead has always had that coat.

There will be days when you feel wonderfully close to God.

And days when God seems to have stepped out briefly without leaving a forwarding address.

Keep showing up.

Not because showing up earns God’s love.

Grace has never operated on an attendance sheet.

Show up because love grows through presence.

Friendship grows through presence.

Community grows through presence.

Faith grows through presence.

And somewhere in the ordinary repetition of prayer and meals and conversations and Eucharists and dishes and errands and autumn mornings, something holy is happening.

We may not notice it immediately.

Grace is often rather discreet.

But perhaps one day we will look back and discover that while we thought we were merely showing up, God was quietly shaping us.

Prayer by prayer.

Meal by meal.

Sunday by Sunday.

Act of kindness by act of kindness.

Until the ordinary life we were living became the place where holiness had been growing all along.

And perhaps that is one of the quiet secrets of Ordinary Time.

God does not always ask us to do something extraordinary.

Sometimes God simply asks us to come back tomorrow.

And, wonderfully, God promises to be there too.

“Holiness may be less about doing extraordinary things and more about returning faithfully to ordinary things with love.”

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Faithful God,

Meet us in the ordinary places of our lives. Give us grace to keep showing up, courage to begin again, and eyes to recognize your presence in small acts of love and faithfulness. When we grow weary, remind us that holiness is often formed quietly—in returning, forgiving, serving, praying, and loving again.

Help us to trust that wherever love calls us to return, you are already there.

Amen.

The Holy Art of Not Getting Everything Done

There is something deeply satisfying about a list.

I am particularly fond of lists because they create the impression that life is under control.

You write down six things in the morning, place a small box beside each one, and then proceed through the day with the serene confidence of a person who believes the universe can be managed with a ballpoint pen.

Occasionally this even works.

You answer the email.

You make the telephone call.

You pick up the groceries.

You return the library book that has been sitting beside the front door for three weeks specifically so that you would remember to return it.

And then, with considerable ceremony, you place a checkmark beside each accomplishment.

There are few pleasures quite so immediate.

Unfortunately, somewhere around item four, life usually becomes involved.

Someone telephones.

A meeting runs long.

The car develops an interesting new noise.

The dog is sick.

A friend needs to talk.

The computer decides that precisely now would be an excellent time to install seventeen updates.

And by supper, the list that began the morning as a declaration of human competence has become documentary evidence for the prosecution.

Three boxes remain unchecked.

We have not finished.

And we do not like unfinished things.

The Religion of Getting Things Done

We live in a culture that admires completion.

Projects should be finished.

Goals should be achieved.

Inboxes should apparently reach something called “zero,” although I have always regarded Inbox Zero as one of those mythical places like Atlantis or a church meeting that ends ten minutes early.

Even our language reveals the expectation.

We ask one another, “What did you get done today?”

Rarely does someone ask:

“Where did you notice grace today?”

Or:

“Who needed you today?”

Or:

“Did anything beautiful interrupt your schedule?”

Productivity is useful, of course. Things genuinely need doing. Laundry cannot survive indefinitely on theological reflection. Eventually someone has to put it in the washing machine.

But trouble begins when productivity quietly becomes identity.

I accomplished something, therefore I matter.

I finished something, therefore the day was worthwhile.

I was useful, therefore I am valuable.

And somewhere beneath all of that is the exhausting suspicion that perhaps God is keeping a list too.

Jesus Was Surprisingly Interruptible

One of the remarkable things about Jesus in the Gospels is how often his plans are interrupted.

He is walking somewhere when someone calls out.

He is teaching when somebody arrives.

He is travelling when a sick person needs attention.

He is attempting to get away for some rest when an entire crowd appears.

If I had been organizing Jesus’ ministry, I would have suggested a better appointment system.

Perhaps colour-coded.

Possibly with an administrative assistant.

Certainly with clearly posted office hours.

But Jesus seems remarkably unconcerned about the efficiency of the schedule.

Again and again, the interruption becomes the ministry.

The person who was not on the agenda becomes the person standing directly in front of him.

And Jesus notices.

That may be one of the quiet disciplines of Christian life: learning that the unexpected thing is not necessarily preventing us from doing God’s work.

Sometimes the unexpected thing is God’s work.

Ordinary Time Is Full of Unfinished Things

These autumn days between Thanksgiving and All Saints are full of unfinishedness.

The garden is nearly finished but not quite.

Some leaves have fallen; others remain stubbornly attached to the trees as though they have not received the memorandum.

The daylight is shortening.

Winter is coming, but autumn has not yet packed its bags.

The Church calls this Ordinary Time.

And perhaps Ordinary Time teaches us something about living faithfully in the middle.

Most of life is lived there.

Between beginning and completion.

Between prayer and answer.

Between planting and harvest.

Between diagnosis and recovery.

Between disagreement and reconciliation.

Between grief and whatever healing eventually becomes.

Between the person we once were and the person God is still creating.

We are unfinished people living unfinished lives in an unfinished world.

And remarkably, God does not appear embarrassed by this.

God Seems Quite Comfortable With Process

Scripture begins with creation unfolding.

Abraham begins walking without knowing exactly where the journey will lead.

Israel spends forty years getting somewhere that might have looked considerably closer on a map.

The disciples misunderstand Jesus repeatedly.

Peter takes approximately three years to learn lessons he will later forget in a courtyard.

Paul writes to churches that are very clearly works in progress.

And the Kingdom of God itself is described as something growing — seed becoming plant, yeast working through dough, a tiny beginning moving toward something larger.

God seems rather fond of process.

We prefer instant holiness.

God seems content with growth.

We would like transformation delivered by Tuesday afternoon.

God works through seasons.

Perhaps that is because grace is not simply interested in getting us somewhere.

Grace is forming us while we travel.

The Unchecked Box

So perhaps there is a small spiritual practice available to us at the end of an ordinary day.

Look at the things you did not finish.

The email unanswered.

The cupboard still untidy.

The project half-completed.

The telephone call postponed until tomorrow.

And instead of allowing those things to become evidence that the day somehow failed, simply say:

Enough.

Not because the work does not matter.

Not because responsibility is unimportant.

But because you are not the Messiah.

That position has already been filled.

And this is very good news.

The world will continue while you sleep.

God will remain awake.

Grace will continue working in places you cannot see.

Seeds will grow underground.

Hearts will change slowly.

Mercies will arrive quietly.

And tomorrow morning there will undoubtedly be another list.

Before All Saints

Perhaps that is worth remembering as we move toward All Saints.

The saints were not people who managed to finish themselves.

They were people who learned to trust God with their unfinishedness.

They stumbled.

They doubted.

They occasionally made spectacular mistakes.

Some were undoubtedly difficult to live with.

A few probably left things lying around.

But somewhere in their wonderfully imperfect lives, they discovered that holiness was not the achievement of flawless human beings.

It was the patient work of grace.

And that same grace is working in us.

Even today.

Even when the list remains unfinished.

Even when the prayer remains unanswered.

Even when we are still becoming the people we hoped we would already be.

Perhaps the holiest thing you can do tonight is not squeeze one more accomplishment out of the day.

Perhaps it is simply to stop.

Put down the pen.

Leave one box unchecked.

Say your prayers.

Turn off the light.

And trust that the God who has begun a good work in you has not misplaced the project.

After all, tomorrow is another ordinary day.

And ordinary days, as we are discovering, are precisely where God seems to do some of God’s finest work.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

God of unfinished lives and patient grace,

teach me to know when enough is enough.

When the list remains unfinished,
when plans are interrupted,
and when I have not accomplished all I intended,
remind me that my worth is not measured
by what I manage to complete.

Give me grace to notice the holy interruptions,
wisdom to do faithfully what is mine to do,
and humility to leave the rest in your hands.

Keep forming me through these ordinary days,
and help me trust that what remains unfinished in me
is still held within your patient love.

Tonight, let me put down the pen,
release what I cannot complete,
and rest in the promise
that you are still at work.

Amen.

The Holiness of Things That Need Doing

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.

The Spiritual Importance of Putting the Kettle On

There are moments in the Christian life when one expects God to appear.

Christmas Eve, for example.

Easter morning.

A beautiful hymn sung particularly well.

A sunset over a quiet lake when the water is perfectly still and, for reasons nobody can quite explain, there are no mosquitoes.

These are moments when we are prepared for transcendence.

We become quiet. We pay attention. We suspect that heaven may be nearby.

But then there are Tuesdays.

Tuesdays are rarely accused of being transcendent.

Tuesday generally arrives carrying a grocery list, three emails requiring answers, a load of laundry, something mysterious happening beneath the kitchen sink, and the vague suspicion that there was something important we were supposed to remember.

This is why I have come to believe that one of the great spiritual disciplines of Ordinary Time may simply be this:

Put the kettle on.

Not metaphorically.

Actually put the kettle on.

The Theology of the Kettle

There is something wonderfully ordinary about making tea.

You fill the kettle.

You wait.

And this already makes tea-making slightly countercultural, because modern civilization has developed a deep suspicion of waiting.

We have instant messages, instant banking, instant news, instant coffee, and occasionally instant opinions about subjects we first encountered approximately forty-seven seconds ago.

But kettles remain stubbornly committed to the ancient spiritual discipline of taking as long as they take.

You cannot successfully shout a kettle into boiling faster.

I have never tried this personally, of course.

But I know people.

The kettle asks us to wait.

And waiting creates a small space in the day.

A pause.

A breath.

A moment in which nothing particularly productive is happening.

Which may be precisely why God can sometimes get our attention.

Jesus Seemed to Understand This

One of the remarkable things about the Gospels is how much of Jesus’ ministry happens around very ordinary things.

Bread.

Fish.

Tables.

Water.

Meals.

Walking down roads.

Sitting in houses.

Conversations that apparently began without an agenda.

Jesus certainly entered synagogues and the Temple, but he also spent an extraordinary amount of time in kitchens, boats, fields, homes, and dining rooms.

The Kingdom of God kept appearing in places where nobody had installed stained glass.

That should tell us something.

Christianity has sometimes trained us to look for God primarily in what we call “spiritual moments.”

But the Incarnation suggests something much more astonishing.

God entered ordinary human life.

Not an idealized version of it.

Not the carefully edited version suitable for Christmas cards.

Actual life.

Meals had to be prepared.

Feet became dirty.

People became tired.

Friends misunderstood one another.

Families worried.

Wine ran out.

And into this very ordinary world came the Word made flesh.

Perhaps holiness has always been much closer to the kitchen than we imagined.

The Ministry of the Mug

There is another reason I think making tea may be spiritually significant.

Tea is often something we make for somebody else.

“Would you like a cup?”

It is one of the simplest questions in the English language.

And yet sometimes it means:

Sit down.

Tell me what happened.

You do not need to hurry.

I am listening.

You are welcome here.

There are pastoral conversations that begin with prayer.

There are others that begin with a kettle clicking off in the kitchen.

I suspect God is equally capable of inhabiting both.

Hospitality rarely announces itself as a theological virtue.

Usually it looks like finding another mug.

Clearing some papers off the table.

Opening the biscuit tin.

Discovering that somebody has eaten the last biscuit and briefly reconsidering one’s commitment to Christian forgiveness.

Then sitting down.

And listening.

This is how grace often enters the room.

Quietly.

Without credentials.

Carrying tea.

Ordinary Time Is Full of Sacraments We Never Named

We Anglicans understand sacramental life.

We know that ordinary things can become bearers of extraordinary grace.

Water.

Bread.

Wine.

Oil.

Hands laid gently upon another person.

Physical things through which God communicates something deeper.

But perhaps sacramental imagination should not stop at the church door.

Perhaps there are little sacramental moments scattered everywhere through our days.

A meal prepared for someone we love.

A telephone call we finally make.

A neighbour whose driveway we shovel.

A chair pulled closer to someone who is grieving.

A casserole delivered without requiring a committee meeting.

A cup of tea placed quietly beside someone who has had a difficult day.

None of these things will appear particularly impressive on a résumé.

Heaven seems remarkably unconcerned about résumés.

Jesus once suggested that even a cup of cold water given in love mattered to God.

Which means the Kingdom may be advancing through countless small kindnesses nobody thought important enough to photograph.

The Problem With Looking for Spectacular Grace

Sometimes we imagine that a meaningful Christian life must involve dramatic things.

Great missions.

Great sacrifices.

Great spiritual experiences.

Great accomplishments.

But most discipleship happens somewhere between breakfast and bedtime.

It happens while we are deciding whether to be patient.

Whether to forgive.

Whether to listen.

Whether to notice someone.

Whether to interrupt our carefully organized day because another human being needs us.

Most saints probably became saints this way.

Not through one magnificent act of holiness, but through ten thousand small acts of faithfulness.

One prayer.

One kindness.

One apology.

One meal.

One visit.

One cup of tea.

Repeated over a lifetime.

God Is Already in the Kitchen

These October days between Thanksgiving and All Saints are wonderfully ordinary.

The great feast has passed.

The next great feast has not yet arrived.

The leaves are falling.

The mornings are darker.

The calendar continues filling itself despite repeated requests that it show some restraint.

And perhaps this little stretch of Ordinary Time offers us a gift.

It reminds us that we do not have to wait for Christmas or Easter or some dramatic spiritual breakthrough to encounter God.

God is already here.

At the table.

Beside the sink.

Walking with us through the grocery store.

Sitting beside the hospital bed.

Standing in the doorway when someone needs to talk.

Waiting in that quiet little space between filling the kettle and hearing it boil.

The saints whose feast we will soon celebrate understood something about this.

Holiness is rarely glamorous.

It is simply love becoming habitual.

Faithfulness becoming ordinary.

Grace becoming something we practise almost without noticing.

And perhaps that is one of the deepest invitations of Ordinary Time:

Do not spend your life waiting for extraordinary moments in which to become holy.

Become holy in the ordinary ones.

Put the kettle on.

Find another mug.

Pull up a chair.

Someone may need to talk.

And God may already be sitting at the table.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Gracious God,

thank you for meeting us
in kitchens and conversations,
in waiting and wondering,
in the simple gift of a warm cup
and a listening heart.

Teach us to recognize holiness
in the ordinary moments of our days.
Make us generous with our time,
patient with one another,
and ready to make room at the table.

When we go searching for you
in extraordinary places,
remind us that you are already here.

Give us grace to put the kettle on,
pull up another chair,
and welcome whoever you send our way.

Amen.

God Is in the Unfinished Things

There is something deeply satisfying about finishing something.

A completed project.

A clean kitchen.

A lawn entirely raked.

An inbox containing no unread messages.

I include that last example principally for its imaginative value.

Completion gives us a lovely sense that, for one shining moment, the universe has been brought under control. The dishes are put away. The laundry is folded. The sermon is written. The committee minutes have been approved. The batteries in the smoke detector have finally been replaced.

We stand back and admire our achievement.

Then someone walks into the kitchen carrying a dirty mug.

And creation falls once again into chaos.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons Ordinary Time matters.

The great festivals of the Church have a certain completeness about them. Christmas arrives with angels and shepherds and a child in a manger. Easter arrives with lilies, trumpets, and the astonishing announcement that Christ is risen. Pentecost brings wind and fire. Thanksgiving gathers us around tables groaning beneath the weight of turkey, potatoes, pie, and enough leftovers to feed a modest monastery.

Then comes Tuesday.

Nothing particularly dramatic happens.

There are emails to answer.

Appointments to keep.

Groceries to buy.

Someone has misplaced the car keys.

Again.

And most of life is rather like that.

We Live in the Middle

We like beginnings and endings.

Beginnings are full of possibility. Endings give us satisfaction.

But most of life is lived somewhere between them.

We are becoming something we have not yet become.

We are learning things we have not yet mastered.

We are carrying questions that have not yet been answered.

We are praying prayers whose answers we cannot yet see.

We are trying to forgive.

Trying to trust.

Trying to understand.

Trying to become the people God created us to be.

And we are not finished.

This can be frustrating.

We sometimes imagine that the Christian life ought to produce quicker results.

Surely, after all these years of prayer, worship, Scripture, sermons, Eucharists, committees, potluck suppers, and patiently singing hymns selected by other people, we ought to have become saints by now.

And yet there we are, driving home from church irritated because someone took too long to pull out of the parking lot.

Sanctification, apparently, is taking longer than anticipated.

Jesus Seems Remarkably Comfortable With Process

One of the striking things about Jesus is how often he speaks about the Kingdom of God using images of things that are growing.

Seeds.

Fields.

Vines.

Trees.

Yeast working quietly through dough.

None of these things happens instantly.

You cannot plant a tomato seed at breakfast and complain at lunch that nothing useful has happened.

Well, you can.

But the tomato will remain unimpressed.

Growth takes time.

Roots form where no one can see them.

Seeds break open underground.

Yeast works invisibly.

Branches stretch slowly toward the light.

Much of God’s work in us happens in exactly this way.

Quietly.

Slowly.

Often invisibly.

There are seasons when we wonder whether anything is happening at all.

But grace is patient.

God seems considerably less anxious about our progress than we are.

The Holiness of Half-Finished Things

Perhaps we need to recover a theology of the unfinished.

The prayer that still feels awkward.

The relationship that is slowly healing.

The grief that has become lighter but has not disappeared.

The habit we are trying to change.

The faith that still contains questions.

The ministry whose future we cannot yet see.

The person we are still becoming.

We often look at these things and see failure because they are incomplete.

God may look at them and see growth.

There is a difference.

A house under construction is not a failed house.

A garden in April is not a failed garden.

A child learning to walk is not a failed pedestrian.

And a Christian still learning to love is not a failed disciple.

We are simply unfinished.

And unfinished is not the same thing as abandoned.

God Has Not Put Down the Tools

There is a lovely confidence in Paul’s words to the Philippians: the God who began a good work among them will bring it to completion.

Notice where the confidence lies.

Not in their determination.

Not in their spiritual discipline.

Not in their impressive religious accomplishments.

The confidence lies in God.

God began the work.

God continues the work.

God will complete the work.

That does not make us passive. We still pray, serve, repent, forgive, learn, risk, love, and begin again.

But we do these things knowing that the deepest work of transformation belongs to grace.

God is not standing over us with a clipboard saying, “Honestly, I expected considerably more progress by October.”

God is the patient gardener.

The careful carpenter.

The artist who sees something in the unfinished canvas that the rest of us cannot yet imagine.

Ordinary Time Is Workshop Time

Maybe that is one way to think about these days between Thanksgiving and All Saints.

This is workshop time.

There are wood shavings on the floor.

Paint on the brushes.

Half-finished things everywhere.

The Church has taken off some of its festival clothing and returned to the ordinary work of becoming.

And perhaps that is exactly where we need to be.

Because All Saints is coming.

Soon we will remember those remarkable women and men whose lives revealed something of the holiness of God.

But I suspect that if we could ask most of the saints whether they considered themselves finished products, they would laugh.

Probably rather loudly.

The saints were not people who reached spiritual perfection and spent the remainder of their lives glowing gently in stained-glass windows.

They struggled.

They doubted.

They failed.

They repented.

They started again.

They discovered that holiness is less about arriving and more about continuing to walk toward God.

That is good news for the rest of us.

Perhaps Today Is Enough

You do not need to finish your whole life today.

You do not need to solve every problem.

You do not need to understand every mystery.

You do not need to become completely patient, perfectly generous, entirely forgiving, universally cheerful, and capable of attending every church meeting without occasionally wondering how long it will last.

Today you may simply need to take the next faithful step.

Say the prayer.

Make the phone call.

Offer the apology.

Take the walk.

Read the Scripture.

Feed someone.

Forgive a little more than yesterday.

Notice the person who needs kindness.

Begin again.

Because God is not waiting for the finished version of you before deciding to love you.

God is already here.

Among the loose ends.

Among the unanswered questions.

Among the half-finished projects and prayers.

Among the ordinary Tuesdays when nothing seems particularly holy.

The workshop lights are still on.

The tools are still on the bench.

And grace is still at work.

Perhaps the great spiritual discovery of Ordinary Time is simply this:

God is not only waiting for us at the finish line.

God is with us in the unfinished things.

And that means there may be considerably more holiness lying around your ordinary life today than you imagined.

Even beside the dirty mug someone just left in the kitchen.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Loving God, meet me in the unfinished places—in the questions, the slow progress, and the things still undone. Give me patience with myself, courage for the next faithful step, and trust that your grace is still at work in me. Amen.

When Nothing Much Happens: The Spiritual Gift of an Uneventful Day

There are days that announce themselves.

Christmas arrives with carols and candles. Easter comes with lilies and trumpets. Thanksgiving appears carrying a turkey large enough to require both an engineering degree and a prayer meeting.

Birthdays have cake. Weddings have photographs. Funerals have flowers. Anniversaries have cards, provided someone remembered the anniversary in the first place.

And then there is Tuesday.

Tuesday rarely announces itself.

It simply arrives.

You wake up. You make coffee. You discover that someone has left precisely enough milk in the carton to avoid being accused of finishing it. You answer emails. You look for your glasses while wearing your glasses. You put something somewhere safe and immediately create a mystery that may occupy the remainder of your natural life.

Nothing particularly dramatic happens.

And perhaps that is one of God’s great gifts.

Our Addiction to the Remarkable

We live in a culture fascinated by extraordinary things.

Everything must be amazing.

Meals are amazing. Holidays are amazing. Television programmes are amazing. A new brand of toothpaste apparently offers an experience bordering upon transcendence.

Social media has not helped.

We scroll through photographs of sunsets, vacations, celebrations, beautifully arranged meals, remarkable accomplishments, and people standing beside lakes looking considerably more spiritually fulfilled than anyone has a right to look before breakfast.

Meanwhile, most of life is happening somewhere else.

Most of life happens while washing dishes.

Most of life happens driving to work, making lunches, answering telephone calls, folding laundry, buying groceries, waiting for appointments, taking out the garbage, and wondering why there are seventeen unmatched socks in the laundry basket when you are reasonably certain you purchased them in pairs.

Christian faith can sometimes inherit the same fascination with the spectacular.

We love conversion stories.

We love miracles.

We love mountaintop experiences.

We love those moments when God seems unmistakably present.

And thank God for them.

But Scripture suggests that God has never confined divine activity to dramatic occasions.

God also seems remarkably fond of ordinary days.

Jesus Spent a Great Deal of Time Doing Nothing Remarkable

The Gospels tell us about approximately three years of Jesus’ public ministry.

Before that came nearly thirty years about which Scripture tells us very little.

Thirty years.

That is an astonishing amount of unrecorded holiness.

We know about Bethlehem. We know about the visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve.

And then the Gospel writers effectively say, “Several decades passed.”

What happened?

Presumably, Jesus grew up.

He learned Joseph’s trade. He ate meals. He attended synagogue. He knew neighbours. He celebrated festivals. He worked with his hands. He probably repaired things that broke.

The Son of God apparently spent most of his earthly life doing things nobody thought important enough to write down.

That ought to tell us something.

The Incarnation does not merely mean that God entered human suffering.

It also means that God entered human ordinariness.

God entered kitchens and workshops.

God entered conversations and chores.

God entered family life and village life.

God entered days when absolutely nothing happened that would ever appear in a history book.

And because Christ entered ordinary life, ordinary life can never again be dismissed as spiritually insignificant.

The Holiness of Repetition

There is something deeply sacramental about repetition.

Morning comes again.

Bread is broken again.

Prayers are said again.

The kettle boils again.

Someone needs feeding again.

Someone needs forgiving again.

Someone needs listening to again.

The Christian life is not usually built from a handful of heroic moments.

It is built from thousands of small acts of faithfulness.

We pray again.

We forgive again.

We show up again.

We begin again.

This is why the Church’s long season of Ordinary Time matters so much.

The liturgical colour is green because green is the colour of growth.

And growth is usually unimpressive while it is happening.

Nobody stands beside a tomato plant at three o’clock in the afternoon and shouts, “Look! It grew!”

You would have to possess both exceptional eyesight and very little else to do.

But return a week later and something has changed.

Roots have deepened.

Leaves have opened.

Fruit has begun forming.

Much of God’s work in us happens exactly like that.

Quietly.

Gradually.

Almost invisibly.

Grace rarely sends a progress report.

Perhaps Boring Is a Blessing

We are inclined to complain when life becomes uneventful.

“Nothing happened today.”

But consider what that sentence may actually mean.

No one called with terrible news.

No ambulance arrived.

No relationship collapsed.

No crisis erupted.

No doctor spoke the sentence you were afraid to hear.

No one you love disappeared from your life.

Perhaps “nothing happened today” is sometimes another way of saying:

Today was held together by grace.

There are seasons when an uneventful day is something we would give almost anything to have.

Anyone who has lived through grief, illness, uncertainty, conflict, or sudden change knows this.

There comes a moment when you no longer long for excitement.

You long for normal.

You want coffee in your usual mug.

You want the dog to need walking.

You want to complain mildly about the weather.

You want to stand in the grocery store wondering why one apparently needs a mortgage to purchase cheese.

You want ordinary life back.

And when it returns, you discover that ordinary was never ordinary at all.

It was grace wearing work clothes.

God Is Already Here

Perhaps one of the great spiritual disciplines of Ordinary Time is learning to stop asking God to appear somewhere else.

We often imagine that God is waiting for us in some future moment.

When life settles down.

When we become more prayerful.

When we finally understand what we are doing.

When the house is organized.

When the children grow up.

When retirement comes.

When the difficult season ends.

Then, perhaps, we will have time for God.

But God has never been particularly interested in waiting for ideal circumstances.

The God revealed in Jesus Christ keeps entering the life we actually have.

The messy kitchen.

The crowded calendar.

The unfinished conversation.

The hospital waiting room.

The commute.

The garden.

The office.

The supper table.

The quiet evening when nobody telephones and nothing remarkable happens.

This is where grace meets us.

Not after life becomes extraordinary.

Here.

Now.

In this ordinary Tuesday.

The Prayer of an Uneventful Day

Perhaps tonight, when someone asks, “How was your day?” you will be tempted to say:

“Nothing much happened.”

Before dismissing it, consider what may have happened unnoticed.

Someone smiled because you were kind.

Someone felt less alone because you listened.

Someone ate because you cooked.

Someone was encouraged because you spoke.

Someone was forgiven.

Someone was remembered in prayer.

A small piece of God’s creation was tended.

A relationship was quietly strengthened.

A burden became slightly lighter.

And somewhere beneath all of it, unnoticed and unannounced, God continued the patient work of grace.

No trumpets.

No headlines.

No heavenly fireworks.

Just another ordinary day in the Kingdom of God.

And perhaps that is enough.

Perhaps holiness has always looked more like this than we imagined.

Because the great mystery of Ordinary Time is not that nothing is happening.

The great mystery is that God is doing something holy in days we are tempted to overlook.

So tomorrow morning, when another apparently unremarkable day arrives, receive it carefully.

Make the coffee.

Say your prayers.

Feed somebody.

Forgive somebody.

Notice something beautiful.

Do the work in front of you.

Love the people God has placed within reach.

And do not be surprised if, years from now, you discover that these ordinary days were quietly becoming your life.

Because they were.

And God was there all along.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

God of ordinary days,
open our eyes to the grace hidden within familiar things. Teach us to receive each day with gratitude, to do small things with great love, and to recognize Christ beside us in every quiet moment. Amen.

The Holiness of Almost Nothing Happening

There are days when almost nothing happens.

You get up. You make coffee. You discover that someone has returned the milk to the refrigerator with approximately one tablespoon left in the carton, presumably because throwing it away would have required a level of moral courage unavailable at that hour.

You answer a few emails.

You look for your glasses while wearing them.

You put something somewhere safe and immediately create a mystery that may not be solved until Lent.

You make supper. You wash the dishes. You turn off the lights.

And another day has passed.

No angels appeared.

No seas parted.

No voice thundered from heaven.

Not even a respectable burning bush.

Just Tuesday.

We tend not to think of days like these as particularly significant. They are the spaces between the important things.

Birthdays are important.

Weddings are important.

Christmas is important.

Easter is important.

The first day of a new job is important. The day the doctor gives you the news is important. The day the child is born, the day someone dies, the day we move house, the day we retire—these are the days we remember.

But most of life does not happen on those days.

Most of life happens on Tuesdays.

The Long Green Season

I have always loved the Church’s calendar partly because it refuses to pretend that every day must be spectacular.

We have our great festivals, certainly.

Christmas arrives with angels and shepherds.

Epiphany brings wise travellers and a star.

Holy Week carries us through the deepest mysteries of suffering, death, and resurrection.

Pentecost comes with wind and fire.

And then there is Ordinary Time.

Green.

Week after week after week of green.

At this point in the year, even the liturgical calendar seems to have settled down.

Thanksgiving has passed. All Saints has not yet arrived. Advent remains somewhere over the horizon.

We are simply here.

Ordinary Time.

The v

The Holy Art of Showing Up: When Faithfulness Looks Remarkably Ordinary

There are days when the Christian life feels wonderfully significant.

There are baptisms and weddings, Christmas Eve services glowing with candlelight, Easter mornings bursting with alleluias, and those rare moments when the sermon actually comes together precisely as the preacher hoped it might.

These occasions are sufficiently unusual that clergy generally remember them.

Then there is Tuesday.

Tuesday seldom arrives carrying trumpets.

Tuesday arrives with laundry.

There are dishes in the sink, emails requiring answers, groceries requiring purchase, appointments requiring attendance, and something mysterious growing in a container at the back of the refrigerator which everyone in the household has silently agreed not to investigate.

And somewhere in the middle of all this ordinary life, God says:

Here.

Here is where I would like you to be faithful.

One of the great misunderstandings of the spiritual life is the assumption that holiness must be dramatic.

We imagine saints standing courageously before emperors, missionaries crossing oceans, prophets confronting kings, and apostles setting off toward unknown lands carrying nothing but the Gospel and a remarkably inadequate travel wardrobe.

And certainly the history of our faith contains such people.

But most Christian discipleship has never looked like that.

Most Christian discipleship has looked like someone getting out of bed in the morning and trying once again to love God and neighbour.

It looks like making breakfast.

Keeping promises.

Calling someone who is lonely.

Forgiving the person who has irritated us for reasons that, upon careful theological examination, turn out to be approximately 83 percent ridiculous.

It looks like praying when prayer feels meaningful and praying when it does not.

It looks like returning to worship.

Returning to kindness.

Returning to generosity.

Returning to hope.

Again and again.

There is a wonderfully unglamorous word for this.

Faithfulness.

We live in a culture fascinated by beginnings.

New programs.

New diets.

New plans.

New ministries.

New exercise equipment purchased in January which, by March, has become an exceptionally expensive device upon which to hang clothing.

Beginnings are exciting because they contain possibility.

Faithfulness is different.

Faithfulness asks what happens after the excitement has disappeared.

The Scriptures understand this.

God’s people spend a great deal of biblical history discovering that covenant is not merely something declared in dramatic moments. Covenant must be lived on ordinary mornings.

Israel receives the commandments at Sinai amid thunder and lightning.

Very impressive.

But eventually someone still has to go home and love their neighbour.

Jesus calls the disciples beside the Sea of Galilee.

Wonderful moment.

But then they must spend the next several years walking dusty roads, listening, learning, misunderstanding, trying again, and occasionally arguing about which of them is the greatest.

The disciples, it should be noted, were remarkably gifted at demonstrating that Jesus did not recruit his followers from a catalogue entitled Promising Candidates for Immediate Sainthood.

And perhaps that is encouraging.

Because neither were we.

Jesus simply says, “Follow me.”

And following is rarely accomplished in one magnificent leap.

It happens one step at a time.

This is why Ordinary Time is such an important part of the Church year.

It teaches us something we desperately need to remember:

God does not require extraordinary circumstances in order to do holy work.

The colour may be green.

The hymns may be familiar.

The calendar may contain no major feast.

Nothing particularly dramatic may be happening.

And yet the Kingdom of God continues quietly growing.

Jesus understood this better than anyone.

When he wanted to describe God’s Kingdom, he frequently reached for very ordinary things.

Seeds.

Bread.

Yeast.

Fields.

Fishing nets.

Coins.

Sheep.

Jesus apparently believed the universe could reveal profound theological truth without requiring a PowerPoint presentation.

A mustard seed disappears into the soil.

Nothing seems to happen.

Then something happens.

A little more.

Then more.

Eventually there is a plant where previously there was only dirt.

This is how grace often works.

Quietly.

Patiently.

Almost invisibly.

We sometimes look at our lives and wonder whether anything spiritual is happening at all.

Perhaps prayer feels routine.

Perhaps worship feels familiar.

Perhaps we are not experiencing great revelations or dramatic transformations.

But perhaps something deeper is happening.

Perhaps God is forming us through repetition.

Every time we choose compassion rather than contempt.

Every time we choose patience rather than irritation.

Every time we choose generosity rather than fear.

Every time we return to prayer.

Every time we show up.

Something is being planted.

Something is growing.

The growth may be too small to notice today.

But grace has never been terribly concerned with our preferred timetable.

Ask any gardener.

You can plant a seed on Monday and stare at the ground intensely on Tuesday, but this rarely intimidates the seed into faster growth.

The spiritual life requires the same patience.

God is working beneath the surface.

And perhaps this is especially important during these autumn days between Thanksgiving and All Saints.

Thanksgiving invited us to notice the gifts already surrounding us.

All Saints will soon invite us to remember lives shaped by grace.

But between those two celebrations lies this stretch of Ordinary Time.

And perhaps the Church quietly asks us:

What happens between gratitude and sainthood?

Mostly this.

We show up.

We pray.

We forgive.

We serve.

We begin again.

We try to love the person standing in front of us.

And tomorrow we do it again.

The saints we celebrate on November 1 did not become saints because every day of their lives was extraordinary.

They became saints because grace was allowed to inhabit their ordinary days.

They kept turning toward God.

Sometimes courageously.

Sometimes reluctantly.

Sometimes joyfully.

Sometimes with the spiritual enthusiasm of someone being asked to leave a warm bed on a cold October morning.

But they kept turning.

That may be one of the most hopeful things we can say about holiness.

Holiness is not reserved for spiritual superheroes.

It is what happens when ordinary people keep making room for God.

So perhaps today does not need to be remarkable.

Perhaps you do not need a revelation.

Perhaps heaven does not require you to accomplish something magnificent before supper.

Perhaps the invitation is simpler.

Show up.

Say your prayers.

Do the work that belongs to you.

Be kind.

Forgive someone.

Feed someone.

Listen carefully.

Notice beauty.

Give thanks.

And trust that God can take these small acts of faithfulness and weave them into something larger than we can presently see.

Because the Kingdom of God has always had a curious preference for small beginnings.

Seeds.

Bread.

A manger.

A cross.

An empty tomb.

Ordinary things through which God accomplishes extraordinary grace.

And perhaps that is the quiet miracle of Ordinary Time.

Nothing appears to be happening.

And God is everywhere at work.

Most holiness is not found in doing something extraordinary. It is found in doing ordinary things faithfully enough that grace has time to grow.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Faithful God,

meet me in the ordinary places of this day.

When nothing seems remarkable,
teach me to recognize your grace.
When faithfulness feels repetitive,
give me patience to keep showing up.
When I am tempted to believe that small things do not matter,
remind me that your Kingdom grows from seeds,
your grace is revealed in bread,
and your love became flesh in a manger.

Give me grace to pray,
to forgive,
to serve,
to listen,
to notice,
and to love the person you place before me.

Take these small acts of faithfulness
and make of them something holy.

And when I cannot see what you are doing,
help me trust that beneath the ordinary soil of my life,
grace is still growing.

Amen.

The Spiritual Discipline of Not Being in Such a Hurry

There is a peculiar feature of modern life that deserves considerably more theological attention than it receives: we are nearly always on our way to something else.

We walk through Monday thinking about Tuesday. We sit through October wondering how soon Christmas will arrive. We drink our morning coffee while planning lunch, eat lunch while worrying about supper, and spend supper discussing what must be accomplished tomorrow.

It is entirely possible to travel through an entire day without actually arriving in it.

This may explain why God sometimes has such difficulty getting our attention.

Not, I hasten to add, because God is particularly subtle. God has been known to employ burning bushes, pillars of fire, angelic choirs, parted seas, and prophets who seem constitutionally incapable of speaking quietly.

The difficulty may simply be that we are busy.

Moses notices the burning bush because he turns aside to look.

Samuel eventually hears the voice calling his name because Eli tells him to stop running back and forth and listen.

The disciples recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread because, for one blessed moment, they are sitting at a table rather than rushing toward the next appointment.

Again and again, Scripture suggests that revelation requires something remarkably unfashionable:

attention.

The Holiness of Paying Attention

These days between Thanksgiving and All Saints are wonderfully ordinary.

The great turkey has been reduced to sandwiches.

The leaves are becoming less picturesque and more something that must be raked.

The garden has largely surrendered.

The furnace has begun making noises that cause homeowners to stare thoughtfully at the ceiling.

And somewhere in a shopping centre, Christmas decorations have probably appeared with the quiet theological confidence that Advent is merely an administrative inconvenience.

The Church, however, gives us these ordinary days.

No great festival demands our attention just yet.

We are simply here.

And perhaps that is precisely the gift.

Because Christianity is not chiefly about escaping ordinary life. It is about discovering that God has entered it.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.”

That may be one of the most astonishing sentences ever written.

God did not merely send instructions.

God moved into the neighbourhood.

Jesus walked dusty roads. He ate meals. He attended weddings. He visited friends. He became tired. He noticed children. He watched farmers sow seed and women knead bread. He paid attention to birds, flowers, coins, fishing nets, vineyards, weather, neighbours, strangers, and people everybody else had somehow managed not to see.

Jesus seems to have possessed the remarkable ability to be where he was.

We might call that holiness.

Hurry Has a Theology Too

Hurry quietly teaches us something.

It tells us that the present moment is insufficient.

Something more important is coming.

Somewhere else matters more.

Someone else deserves our attention.

Once we finish this task, solve this problem, answer this email, survive this week, complete this project, get through this season—then we will begin living properly.

The trouble is that “then” has an extraordinary habit of moving.

I have personally observed that tomorrow remains stubbornly one day away regardless of how enthusiastically one pursues it.

Jesus offers another way.

“Do not worry about tomorrow,” he says.

This is not irresponsibility. Jesus is not recommending that we throw away calendars, abandon retirement planning, or inform Revenue Canada that Matthew 6 has rendered income tax spiritually unnecessary.

He is reminding us that grace is given in the present tense.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Not next Thursday’s bread.

Not the bread required for the entire fiscal year.

This day.

Perhaps God Is Already Here

One of the great temptations of the spiritual life is to imagine that God will become more available once circumstances improve.

When life settles down.

When grief becomes lighter.

When work becomes manageable.

When the children are older.

When retirement arrives.

When the parish budget balances.

When the house is finally organized.

I have seen enough basements to suspect that the Kingdom of God may arrive before the average Canadian household is completely organized.

Grace does not wait.

God keeps appearing in the life we actually have.

Not the life we meant to have.

Not the life we will someday have.

This one.

That means the ordinary moment deserves our attention.

The conversation at the grocery store.

The neighbour waving from across the street.

The cup of tea after a difficult afternoon.

The October sunlight falling across the kitchen floor.

The friend whose name suddenly comes to mind.

The person sitting quietly at the edge of the room whom everyone else has overlooked.

The unexpected laughter.

The silence after prayer.

The person who needs five minutes of our time when we had carefully allocated four.

We may call these interruptions.

God has occasionally been known to call them appointments.

All Saints Is Coming

Soon the Church will arrive at All Saints.

We will remember those whose lives have become signs of Christ’s presence among us.

But I suspect very few saints woke each morning thinking, “Today I shall become historically significant.”

Most simply tried to be faithful where they were.

They prayed.

They noticed.

They served.

They forgave.

They cooked meals.

They visited the lonely.

They challenged injustice.

They cared for the sick.

They welcomed strangers.

They kept showing up.

Holiness accumulated quietly.

Perhaps sainthood is less about accomplishing spectacular things than becoming increasingly available to God in ordinary ones.

That possibility should both encourage and alarm us.

Encourage us because holiness may be nearer than we imagined.

Alarm us because we have just lost our best excuse.

Stay Here for a Moment

So perhaps the invitation for today is wonderfully small.

Do not hurry past your own life.

Stay here.

Notice something.

Listen to someone.

Taste your coffee before it becomes cold.

Look at the trees before November removes the evidence.

Say the prayer you keep meaning to say.

Telephone the person whose name keeps wandering through your thoughts.

Sit quietly for sixty seconds without attempting to improve yourself.

And before rushing toward whatever comes next, ask:

Where is God in this moment?

You may not receive thunder.

There may be no angel.

The bush may remain entirely unburned.

But you may discover something quieter and perhaps more important.

God was already here.

And perhaps the spiritual life begins when we finally arrive too.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

God of this moment,

slow our hurried hearts.

When we are already thinking about tomorrow,
teach us to receive today.
When we rush past people, beauty, silence, and grace,
give us eyes to notice.

Remind us that you are not waiting somewhere ahead of us.
You are here—
in ordinary conversations,
unexpected interruptions,
quiet acts of kindness,
October sunlight,
and daily bread.

Give us the grace to be fully present
to you,
to one another,
and to the life you have placed before us.

And when we are tempted to hurry toward something more important,
help us remember that love is usually found
right where we are.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Holy Art of Being Interrupted

I have occasionally suspected that one of the principal differences between God and me is that God does not appear to consult my calendar.

This is inconvenient.

I have a calendar. It has colours. It has appointments. It has reminders that remind me about other reminders. There are days when I look at it with the quiet satisfaction of a person who has successfully brought the universe under administrative control.

And then the telephone rings.

Or someone appears at the door.

Or the car makes a noise that automobiles are not supposed to make.

Or a conversation that was expected to last three minutes develops ambitions.

And suddenly the carefully arranged day becomes something else entirely.

We usually call these things interruptions.

I wonder whether God sometimes calls them appointments.

Jesus Was Constantly Being Interrupted

One of the striking things about the Gospels is how often Jesus seems to be on his way somewhere when something unexpected happens.

He is travelling when someone cries out.

He is teaching when somebody asks a question.

He is going to help one person when another person reaches through the crowd and touches his cloak.

Children arrive when the disciples clearly believe Jesus has more important things to do.

People climb trees, tear holes in roofs, shout from roadsides, appear beside wells, and generally demonstrate a complete lack of respect for orderly scheduling.

If the disciples had possessed smartphones, I suspect at least one of them would have been standing nearby saying, “Lord, we really need to keep moving. You have another healing at three-thirty.”

But Jesus stops.

Again and again, Jesus stops.

That may be one of the quietest revelations of God in the whole Gospel.

God is interruptible.

The Person in Front of You

We live in a culture that has become remarkably skilled at treating the present moment as an obstacle on the way to the next one.

We hurry through breakfast because there is work.

We hurry through work because there is supper.

We hurry through supper because there are emails.

We hurry through the emails because eventually, theoretically, there will be some glorious moment when everything is finished and we can finally begin living.

This moment has never actually been observed in nature.

There is always another email.

Perhaps Christian attentiveness begins when we stop believing that our real life is waiting somewhere further down the calendar.

Your life is happening now.

And sometimes the most important part of today will be the thing you did not plan.

The neighbour who wants to talk.

The child who asks the question at precisely the wrong moment.

The friend who calls.

The stranger who needs directions.

The person standing in the grocery aisle studying two nearly identical cans of tomatoes as though the salvation of Western civilization depends upon choosing correctly.

There they are.

And there you are.

And perhaps God is there too.

Interruptions Are Not Always Convenient

This does not mean every interruption must be welcomed.

Some interruptions are genuinely unnecessary. Some boundaries are healthy. Some telemarketers are extraordinarily persistent.

Jesus himself withdrew from crowds. He prayed alone. He rested. He did not respond to every demand made upon him.

Christian availability is not the same thing as allowing everybody else to control your life.

But there is a difference between having boundaries and becoming unavailable.

Sometimes we become so determined to protect our schedules that we accidentally protect ourselves from grace.

We begin believing that efficiency is a spiritual virtue.

Efficiency is useful.

It is simply not one of the fruits of the Spirit.

Love is.

Kindness is.

Patience is.

And unfortunately, all three are terribly inefficient.

Grace Rarely Arrives on Schedule

Most of the significant moments of our lives were probably not entered into our calendars months beforehand.

Friendships begin unexpectedly.

Conversations change us.

Someone says something we remember for twenty years.

A child asks a question.

A stranger offers kindness.

Someone needs us.

Someone notices us.

Someone forgives us.

Someone sits beside us.

Grace has always had a rather casual relationship with scheduling.

Perhaps that is because grace is less interested in our plans than in our presence.

The spiritual question is not simply, “What must I accomplish today?”

It may also be:

Who has God placed in front of me today?

The Ordinary Holiness of Stopping

These weeks between Thanksgiving and All Saints are not especially dramatic.

The turkey has disappeared.

The Christmas decorations have not yet achieved complete territorial dominance, although several stores appear to be making an aggressive advance.

The leaves are falling.

The evenings are shortening.

Life settles back into its ordinary rhythm.

And perhaps that makes these days particularly good for learning the holiness of interruption.

Because holiness is often discovered not in extraordinary experiences but in ordinary attention.

A cup of coffee shared longer than expected.

Five minutes spent listening.

A conversation in the parking lot.

A telephone call answered when we were tempted to let it go to voicemail.

A moment when we stop what we are doing and genuinely see the person standing before us.

These things will never appear on a résumé.

They will not improve productivity statistics.

There is no spreadsheet column marked Unexpected Moments of Grace.

There probably should be.

God Is Already in the Day

We often begin our mornings by asking God to bless our plans.

Perhaps occasionally we might reverse the prayer.

Instead of saying,

“God, bless what I have planned today,”

we might pray,

“God, help me notice what you are already doing today.”

That prayer is considerably more dangerous.

Because the answer may arrive disguised as an interruption.

Someone may need your attention.

Someone may need your patience.

Someone may need your laughter.

Someone may simply need you to stop long enough to remind them that they matter.

And you may discover something surprising.

The interruption was not keeping you from your life.

The interruption was your life.

The disciples eventually learned this while following Jesus along dusty roads.

The Kingdom of God was rarely waiting conveniently at the destination.

It kept appearing along the way.

In crowds.

At tables.

Beside wells.

On roadsides.

In conversations nobody had scheduled.

Perhaps it still does.

So make your plans.

Keep your calendar.

Set your reminders.

Arrive on time.

These are good things.

But leave a little room around the edges of your day.

Grace has a habit of arriving without an appointment.

And when it does, perhaps the holiest thing we can sometimes say is simply:

“I have a minute.”

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Gracious God,

You meet us not only in the moments we plan,
but in the moments that interrupt our plans.

Give us wisdom to know when to keep moving
and grace to know when to stop.

Open our eyes to the people you place before us.
Make us patient enough to listen,
present enough to notice,
and generous enough to give someone the gift of our time.

When grace arrives without an appointment,
help us recognize you standing in the interruption.

And teach us to discover that sometimes
the unexpected moment is not keeping us from life—

it is where life is waiting for us.

Amen.