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Is it OK to just be ordinary?


Thankful in All Things

I know.  I know….It has been a minute.  I really didn’t mean to take this much time off from writing.  It just kind of happened.  It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to share.  It was more that I wasn’t ready to share it.  I needed and, quite honestly, still need time to get my head around the fact that is alright to just be ordinary.  In fact, there is great power being faithful in doing ordinary things that you know will not create much fanfare. As a good friend says, “Do awesome things quietly.”
 
Michael Horton in his book “Ordinary” https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Sustainable-Faith-Radical-Restless/dp/0310517370 writes, “Sometimes, chasing your dreams can be “easier” than just being who we are, where God has placed you, with the gifts he has given to you. However, the power of God unto salvation is not our passion for God, but the passion he has exhibited toward us sinners by sending his own Son to redeem us.” 
For my younger readers, this may not make sense because you have set goals for what you want to accomplish in your life.  I understand and hope those dreams will be realized but the purpose of this post is to say it is alright if what you hope to achieve is not realized as long as you are pursuing that desire in the right way.
Jon Gordon says it this way.  ““I want you to know that in a divided and broken world filled with broken families, broken relationships and broken people (I am one of them) the answer is connection and oneness with a loving God that wants to heal us through a loving relationship.”

I definitely have less years ahead of me than behind.  I realize some things I had hoped to achieve or opportunities I thought might come my way didn’t happen.  If I am honest, it does eat at me.  I ask the questions, “Did I not work hard enough?’ “Should I have put more time into it?” “Why not me rather than someone else?”  All are legitimate but at the end of the day I am becoming content with the answer, “It was not what God intended.”  I am coming to grips with Hebrews 8:24,25, “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”  Simply put, I am banking on this promise of a hope in what has been promised by God but I still can’t see. 


I am no longer working full-time which has been life changing.  It is has been an easy transition except for figuring out why all the free time I was going to have quickly fills up.  The challenge making it a priority to fill it up with the right activities.  Even out of work, one must have a focus to make sure one day does not ooze into the next and then the next.  It has been encouraging to me that my identity is in God and not my work. As I have shared, the challenge has been with the question, “has my life made a difference?” I believe over these last couple of weeks, God has answered that question.  Unsolicited and out of the blue, I have received several texts or Facebook messages saying how my life has made a difference in theirs. They had no idea about what I had been thinking.  I believe God used them to affirm that each of us can have a positive impact on others by just being faithful in the ordinary .which results in us encouraging others to do the same.
Surprisingly, it brought me back to what we are taught in John 15. “Christ is the vine and we are the branches. The one who remains in Me, and I in him, will bear much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing.  Paraphrased from Matthew 12:30,31 We are simply to love Him with all our heart.  Go out loving and serving others as He has done for us.  And then, not worry but instead, trust Him with the outcome.  That will continue to be my focus.  I hope you will choose to do the same.

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