the blessedness of the ordinary

listening: joss stone's introducing joss stone

reading: the rest of God by mark buchanan

i started reading my utmost for his highest again for my devotions. it's been a couple of years since i've been through it, and i have no idea how he did it, but somehow oswald chambers has done it again.

one paragraph in today's reading says:

"'I will never . . . forsake you.' Sometimes it is not the difficulty of life but the drudgery of it that makes me think God will forsake me. When there is no major difficulty to overcome, no vision from God, nothing wonderful or beautiful— just the everyday activities of life— do I hear God’s assurance even in these?"

seriously.

i have such a difficult time with the ordinary. the everyday. the incessant dailyness that makes up the majority of life. the necessary yet banal. if i am going to feel forgotten or alone, chances are it won't be during a G180 school presentation. it won't be while i'm walking in the rodin garden. it won't be while i am playing with meg & nick. it will be during the ordinary-ness of life. the time that i too often tend to think of as filler, rather than actually life.

it seems like i have always struggled with this. i have always been looking forward to something...a trip to disneyworld or paris or poland, a visit from angie, visiting the family...always something. something to help me get through the boring, ordinary-ness en route to something exciting.

yet i know that i cannot climb the arc de triomphe or walk through the silence of the concentration camp at auschwitz every day. even my G180 role might get old if i did it every day (i said 'might'). i suppose if all the extraordinary things of life happened all the time that they too would become the ordinary.

so tonight, i will forget what is to come. i won't focus on all the somewheres i would rather be. tonight i will remember that there is blessedness in this ordinary wednesday night, and i will trust that even though there is nothing spectacular happening in this moment, that God is here with me, and as the prophet Zechariah put it, in chapter 3, verse 17,

the Lord your God is with you,

he is mighty to save.

he will take great delight in you,

he will quiet you with his love,

he will rejoice over you with singing.

i don't know about you, but that seems pretty extraordinary to me. :-)