The Christmas that Truly Is…

Luke 2: 1-20

One of the great realities of life is that the human memory is incredibly powerful.  We are our memories – compiled not so much out of our experiences as from what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget.  There is so much more that happens to us than any of us can ever recall.  One of the more humorous (and humbling) aspects of Christmas season is to get with family and friends and go back home again, i.e., share those memories of our family of origin or even of our current family.  No one remembers everything – and it is quite illuminating to see who remembers what.  Perspective is everything – even in memory.

All of this is to say that when we read the gospel accounts of the nativity and see Matthew emphasizing one aspect (the coming of the wise men some time later) and Luke emphasizing another – the Bethlehem narrative as probably related to him by Mary when both lived out their later years in Ephesus – we can then say that these are not false or contradictory reports, but honest human endeavors to remember and to share the narrative of the birth of Christ.  The reality is that though Christmas has become for us a major celebration, it was not so in the early church or for hundreds of years.  The birth of Christ was so insignificant to the early church that the earliest letters and gospel say nothing about it.  Mark omits it entirely and it is nothing more than a side note in two of Paul’s letters as he refers to Jesus being the son of Mary.  What we know of the birth of Christ we know through the shared and interpreted memory of a few.

So it is with our remembering and retelling of Christmas past.  If we are what we remember, then what do our memories of Christmas tell us about ourselves?  For some of us our Christmas memories are warm and wonderful, hot chocolate or cider, cold nights, relaxing days, giving and receiving gifts – but mostly taking the time to share with our family and closest friends.  Some are shared with extended family and friends while others, separated by insurmountable miles, build these with our immediate family.  Some of us remember bath-robed pageants with aluminum foil stars, stumbling and bumbling recreations that inspired as much laughter as sentiment.  I’ll never forget when, as a 5 year old boy, my father would not let me walk barefoot into the church so I, out of all the magi, had on my bathrobe and my favorite shoes, which happened to be boy’s work boots!  Or the time the donkey bit the church custodian’s hand and would not let go until the custodian bit the donkey on the nose!  

Garrison Keillor, in one of his reports on life in Lake Wobegon, was describing all the activity that occurs in the mythical Minnesota town about this time of the year. Keillor admits that many of the pageants and special services are a bit silly, some of them ridiculous. Why would these ordinary people, who have no acting training, not much acting or musical ability, join in these Yuletide theatricals?  "Because," says Keillor, "it's a great story and we just want to be part of it."

Yes, it is a great story – it is the seminal story of our culture and faith – and we do wish to be a part of it – and we wish for others to know and feel it as do we.  These powerful images burned into our psyches and souls inspire us to make memories for our children and/or grandchildren.  We long for our family to have the same images of Christmas as do we.

For others of us Christmas is not so memorable, for Christmas is not immune from human tragedy.  When I was a boy there was a family who attended our church whose father was an alcoholic. One year the father came to see my father, the pastor, a couple of weeks before Christmas.  “I have stopped drinking,” he announced.  “I am not going to ruin another Christmas for my children.”  Sure enough, he did not, for on Christmas Eve he dropped dead from a heart attack.  Years later I talked with his sons and heard horror stories of what had transpired in their home before his demise.  I wondered, how do they see Christmas?  How do they look at this season and have anything more than painful memories of childhood?  That they were anywhere close to normal was a testimony to their mother and to a church which helped and nurtured them to adulthood.

If we are those for whom Christmas was more of a crisis than a celebration, it is not only o.k. to admit that, it is necessary for our emotional and spiritual health.  When we say that Christmas is not always “Hallmark card-perfect,” we are touching upon the essence of the gospel. The coming of Jesus is good news to a world where bad news is always just below the surface – and sometimes reigns.  The birth of the Messiah is about the love and grace of God to a world in need of both.  Maybe the gift most needed this Christmas is to be released from images of Christmas that never were so that we can celebrate the Christmas that truly is.  

The “Christmas that truly is” is based not in glitter and lights, but in the wonder of a God who loves us.  Christmas reminds us that, in the words of an ancient church theologian, "the Lord did not come to make a display ... [God came] to put himself at the disposal of those who needed him and to be manifested according as they could bear it." ( Athanasius, On the Incarnation. ) 

Most of the inhabitants of Bethlehem saw neither star, nor angels, nor did they hear any singing.  It was just another night like any other night, with the wonder of God’s incarnational presence lost in the ordinariness of human existence. The Christmas that truly is resounds around a feed trough, a newborn baby, and the wonder of simple folk who witnessed it all.  That they were never quite sure of what they witnessed is beyond debate – as is the truth that in that moment they encountered the fullness of God such as they or the world had never known.  This “fullness of God” is grace beyond grace, forgiveness, love, and compassion such as the world could not and still does not comprehend.

Another has put it well: Because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit - but surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment we pray that, following Him we may depart from our anxiety into His peace. ( W. H. Auden, For the Time Being.)

So, join me in celebrating the Christmas that really is.  Gather round the nativity and gaze in wonder and awe before the sacred mystery of life.  Sing carols at the top of your lungs – on key or not – and rejoice that God chose to come among us as one of us.  Rejoice that the last word from God is not judgment but grace, not condemnation but commutation, not death but life – and life eternal.  The “Christmas that really is” ends not in Bethlehem but in Gethsemane where an empty tomb and the promise of angels completes the story.  Nay, the “Christmas that really is” ends not – rather it continues in the hearts and minds of believers, in the multitude of churches with their bath-robed pageants, aluminum foil stars, those stumbling and bumbling recreations of that night when Jesus finally shows up.  The Christmas that really is – no other Christmas can compete!

“To Guide our Feet in the Way of Peace”

Luke 1: 78-79; 3: 1-20

Well – it’s December again and once more we find ourselves wondering what to do with these days from now until Christmas.  Centuries ago the church discovered that these days could best used as a time of preparation for the celebration of the birth of Christ – and so we have the Christian season of Advent.  These Sundays are often used to focus on four themes: peace, joy, hope and love.  So it is that this morning we find ourselves looking at the theme of peace and reflecting upon how we can know the peace that Christ promised.

Most of us come to worship these days with the expectation that the worship service will relate to us and enable us to handle the day-to-day world in which we live.  If a message of peace were ever appropriate, this would seem the time.  Internationally tensions are boiling over, Covid 19 threatens us all, and wars linger around the planet.  Then there is the matter of our own national peace – or lack thereof.  We have greater divisions in our country than many of us can remember, dating back at least to the 1960's.  How can we have peace when we feel so threatened and uneasy?  Many of us come to church hoping and praying to receive a word which will calm our souls, ease our tensions, and allow us to live a somewhat normal and stable life.

The last person we expect to hear from or feel to be relevant to our having peace is John the Baptizer.  Oh, to be sure we know of him.  This kook from the hinterlands shows up preaching repentance and demanding that people give up their soft and comfortable lives in anticipation that the Messiah is coming.  His role is that of the prophet, the one who challenges the status quo – especially us good religious folk.  We've heard those verses where he enumerated what his hearers ought to do: share your coats, share your food, and treat others with justice and equity.  Hmph.  What does John know of peace?

Maybe more than we think.  If we go back to the first chapter of Luke we find the end of his father Zechariah’s song/prophecy which he gave upon hearing that Elizabeth was pregnant with John: “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”   John’s role, it seems, is to prepare for the coming of Jesus by guiding us into the way of peace.  John the Baptizer is the one who is to know what makes for peace.  In other words, we are told that in listening to John we can know how to achieve peace. 

There’s just one slight glitch:  instead of John being soothing and nice, telling us how much God loves us and how valuable we are to God, John strides forward and preaches sermons that sound more like fire and brimstone than they do love and mercy.   The one who is to come, John says, will baptize with fire and will winnow the chaff from the wheat.  To be sure, Luke does take up for John: “With many other exhortations he proclaimed the good news to the people…”  It’s just that what John seems to be saying doesn’t seem to be good news to us – it really seems to be bad news…news of judgment, of fire and burning...not peace at all.

What exactly do we want out of our faith, anyway?  Do we expect it to make us feel good – or do we expect it to challenge us?  A colleague overheard two students having an animated conversation:  “Well, I’m a Methodist, you’re a Catholic; but the main thing is whatever works for you is right, right?”  The other replied: “You don’t know much about Catholics, do you?  My faith is working on me but not necessarily for me.”   (From William Willmon, God Drawing Near.)

“My faith is working on me…but not necessarily for me.”  Ouch.  We’re not Catholics…we tend to be Baptists around here…but we get this.  Real faith, true faith, is not about making us feel good all the time – chocolate bars or exercise work real well in doing that.  Real faith is about transformation, about changing us from the inside out so that we are ready to live in the world that comes with the Messiah.  Real faith is not about a repentance which is remorseful and backward focused, but about a repentance which is about decision making and future oriented.  Real faith understands that it is through transformation in Christ that I am able to become the person who can have peace of any kind – or who can become a peace maker of any kind as well.  

Interestingly enough, Jesus did not tell those whom society labeled as “sinners” to repent.  Jesus told the “sinners” that they were forgiven.  It was the religious people that Jesus called to repentance.  Why?  Could it be that Jesus knew that the sinners already knew that they were sinful…they were reminded of that fact daily.  What they needed was forgiveness.  However, the religious people were a different matter – they did not see themselves as sinners, but as God’s chosen.  They needed to know that repentance was expected and required if they were to be acceptable to God.

How does all of this relate to peace?  Peace is not the absence of hostility, nor is it living life in an “anesthetized state” where in we are immune to the stresses and pressures of the world.  One philosopher has put it well:  “Peace is not the negative conception of anesthesia.  It is a positive feeling which crowns the ‘life and motion’ of the soul.”  Then he adds, “The experience of peace is largely beyond the control of purposes.  It comes as a gift.”  (Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, pp. 367-8.)

When we aim at peace we rarely if ever hit it.  However, when we try to be the kind of people and have the kind of society which fosters justice and fairness, then we know peace as the gift of God. Thomas Merton put it best: “A man who is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his interior fighting into the society of those he lives with, and spreads a contagion of conflict all around him.”  If we find ourselves living in the midst of continual turmoil and conflict, maybe we are spreading our interior conflict onto others – rather than being the peace-makers Christ has called us to be.

Both Jesus and John the Baptizer took a similar approach in dealing with matters of peace:  they began with the personal rather than the corporate or international.  This is quite surprising given the situation that they were living in a country occupied by a foreign government.  Yet, this is a truth which has been recognized the world over – through out all times and cultures.  600 years before the time of Christ a Chinese philosopher penned these words:

If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart. ( Lao-tse – 6^th c. BCE.)

 The only way to achieve personal, soul-full peace is to surrender ourselves to Christ and in so doing allow Christ to fill us with his person, his purpose, and his peace.  Only in self-surrender – of our images of our self, of our desires and goals and wishes, of our hopes and dreams, i.e., of all that we want for our selves and those we love – only in surrender of those that we discover the acceptance and the peace for which we seek.  Tension and stress are mere manifestations of our striving, of our controlling, of our desire to have life be “the way we want it to be.”  It is when we loosen our grip and broaden our hearts that we know the peace and love which come through Jesus the Christ.

When we have the peace of Christ we are then able to accept and love others whom we may have once perceived as the “enemy” or at least as in opposition to our views and way of life. Whether the issue be racism, sexuality, economics or social justice, the answer is clear: when we accept others with the love of Christ we open the doors and smooth the paths that lead to peace, both personal and social.

The path of peace reaches beyond my intellectual beliefs to the person, to the soul of the other and says that relationship is to be valued over our individual perceptions of the “truth.”  Ultimately that is the only way of peace – whether it be in the Middle East, in Africa, in the gangs of our cities, or in our own hearts. For only in our acceptance of the other will we find the “peace” for which we yearn.

Amen.

My Friend, Dr. Hal Warlick

There are people who come into your life, stay a few months or even years, and after leaving you rarely think of them again, for the mark they leave is either non-existent or at best, quite small.  Occasionally there are people who come into your life and your life is never, ever the same again.  Such was Hal Warlick to many, many people — and especially to me.  We met in mid 1990 in Seneca, South Carolina when Hal and Diane visited Trinity Baptist Church, where I was then currently and he a former pastor.  Several members of Trinity had said to me in my first few months there, “You need to meet Hal Warlick…you and Hal have a lot in common.”  Were they ever correct!  After a fifteen minute conversation I knew that his journey in life had allowed him to learn and grow in ways that my life in the SBC cocoon had not afforded me.  For the next 31 years we would grow closer, exchanging sermons, ideas, books — and arguing furiously over most of them!!  

Because of Hal my reading took on a much, much broader field than I had ever dreamed.  He would send me books, drop them off, invite me to come up and give them to me, or recommend I buy an occasional one.  I easily read 500 books because of Hal Warlick — and those did not include his!  More than once he said to me what an elderly member of Trinity had said to him, “You go read — and not the stuff we read — and then come back and tell us what you’ve learned.”  He shared that with me as a way to stimulate me to keep reading — and it worked.

Hal was the consummate wordsmith — whether writing a book or a sermon he could communicate incredibly well.  With a Ph.d. in homiletics I have read and heard a few thousand sermons in my life — Hal was at the top of the list.  Week-in and week-out he was as good a preacher as existed.  He had mastered the use of the manuscript — he loved to preach just as he had written — but could preach without seeming to be bound to the copy.  His breadth of memory of events, illustrations and textual interpretations was boundless.  More than once on a Wednesday I would call Hal and say, “I’m reading such and such a text and I’m stuck.  Help.”  Five minutes later he would have opened a new window into the text and I would be off and running.

Hal’s mind was a true wonder to behold; he could go off in so many different directions on issues and all of them were fascinating.  He was, I believe, one of the most complicated persons I have ever known.  No text or subject was simple or easy to Hal.  He also loved to take the opposite side of any issue I might bring up.  Sometimes that was because he saw it differently, but other times it was because he was just pushing me.  Hal taught me that going deep was better than going broad, and if I were to treat a controversial subject from the pulpit then I better do a deep dive.  

After my first year of encounters with Hal I changed my sermon preparation from writing an outline to a full manuscript.  No, I didn’t read it in the pulpit — having a manuscript was much more difficult for me than an outline.  However, the discipline of writing a full manuscript every week sharpened my focus as well as providing a needed discipline for the ever present danger of pulpit wandering.  Thanks to Hal when professors and colleagues called to ask if I had some sermons to share in their books and journals, I could just turn to the files!

Hal was a mentor in helping me make some very important decisions. Twice when much larger churches called and wanted me to talk with them about coming as their pastor, Hal discouraged me.  In some ways he knew me better than I knew myself!  His statement, “There’s only a couple hundred people in any church who will agree  with or even understand what you’re saying…and that will leave a lot of unhappy people in a larger congregation!”  He helped me to see that a church’s value — and consequentially that of the pastor — is not in how many you have in your congregation, but in the power of that congregation to live out the calling of Christ with integrity.  I can honestly say that the two pulpits we shared as pastor, Trinity and Emerywood, were places where we could live out such a calling.  Not only did we shape those congregations during our tenures, they shaped us as well.

Hal and I both shared a passion for sports — especially seeing our sons compete.  I confessed to him one time that I had been ejected from a game where my boys were playing recreational basketball — the referee was killing us, I knew him personally -- and felt he was homing us in favor of his "home" team!!  Anyway, Hal just smiled — then Diane told me about the time he chased after an official at a Furman football game and she had to call after someone to grab him before he got into trouble.  We laughed, conversing about how angry it made us feel when an official was obviously incompetent.  

We never competed against each other in sports other than a few golf fames — we were too old by the time we met to do anything else.  Fortunately Hal’s athletic skill did not extend to golf — foot speed doesn’t help in golf!  I can honestly say that even on my worst day I could handle Hal — but that doesn’t really say much.  On the few occasions we played we did more laughing and arguing than really playing.  

We went through a lot of physical pain together, that’s for sure.  Hal had open heart surgery, carotid artery surgery, knee repair — he could not walk for weeks — and other physical ailments as well.  I’ll never forget after his open heart surgery getting a call from Diane — we were living in Seneca.  “Can you come up here and take him out for a couple of days…if you don’t I think I ‘m going to kill him.”  I assured her it would have been justifiable homicide, but came on up with some other friends we have a great 3 days talking, eating and planning sermons together.

There was only one person who was able to get the best of Hal no matter the situation — and that was Diane.  Hal would walk to the edge of some discussion, etc., and Diane would give him a stare followed by “Fox” — and that’s all it took.  He would just look at me and grin…and I knew we better move on.  They were so good together and so complemented each other in multitudinous and wonderful ways.  

We all change as we move through life — that’s a process we call maturity.  I saw it in Hal and I was able to look back and see it in myself.  The persons we are at 35 and 45 are not the same at 55 and 65.  Having a friend/mentor so close yet 5 years or so ahead of me, enabled me to benefit greatly from his experience and vision.  Hal and I used to talk every so often about the mistakes we made as young ministers and how, no matter how much we wanted to do so, we could not go back and have a “mulligan.”  In life, as in golf, you have to play the ball as it lies, and once you hit it you cannot “undo” a shot.  What we have to do is to learn from every shot, every putt, every round — and keep moving on in the direction of the Kingdom.

Hal, you’ve entered the great mystery and we all will follow. We had a lot of talks about the promised Kingdom of God, eternal life and how the Scriptures portrayed "heaven" in so many, varying and rich ways. At this stage all I can say is that I am sure of God’s love — and that Hal made that love clearer to myself and so many.  I just lean on Paul’s understanding:  “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Romans 8: 38-39.

Thanks be to God for the good news of Jesus Christ…and for God’s servant Harold C. Warlick who incarnated this love in powerful and unique ways.  

Ordinary People

Mark 1: 1-11

Who are the people God chooses to use?  Most of us would answer:  great people; gifted people; talented people; holy people.  We answer this way because the people in the Bible have been held up to us as icons of virtue—and we know that we are anything but that.  Sometimes we even start thinking that our ministers must be “holy people” who can do no wrong.  (However, if you are ever close to ministers you’ll soon lose that perspective.)  The thought remains that if God uses someone then they must be radically different from the normal person; therefore God cannot use me.  Nothing is further from the truth.  God is in the business of using normal, ordinary people doing normal, ordinary things that become extraordinary in their impact through his love and power.

Look at this scene of our gospel text:  two unnamed disciples are sent to get a donkey from an unnamed owner.  The faces in the crowd are nameless, insignificant people just going about whatever it is they are supposed to be doing.  If they are disciples then they are following Jesus, something they have done for up to three years and other than a few miracles nothing earth shattering has occurred.  The crowd—they are those anonymous souls going about their daily work:  buying and selling, doing whatever their livelihood requires, and a parade starts their way so they stop for a few moments to see what the commotion is about.  The people ask who this is and the reply comes: “Jesus of Nazareth.” 

I can hear their thoughts:  “Oh, the prophet from that backwater town.  I wonder what he will say this trip.”  They were somewhat accustomed to kooks showing up every so often and proclaiming themselves the Messiah, so this is nothing new.  They watch the parade pass by and then return to their work, not really knowing the significance of what has transpired.

Though it may bother us to think that our Lord was perceived as insignificant, is not this how God works?  Has not God always worked through insignificant people at insignificant places in insignificant times doing insignificant things to accomplish the significant?  

• Abram is out minding his own business and God comes and gets him to move to a new country, promising to make him the father of a great nation.  Lest we forget, Abram  is 75 and childless.  
• Moses is a Jew raised as an Egyptian in Pharaoh’s court but is in hiding on the back side of the Negev when God finds him—and a people are set free from slavery.  
• David is a small shepherd boy on whom God lays God’s hand on for reasons known only to God—and a kingdom flourishes.  
• Mary is a young teenage girl in Nazareth to whom an angel appears—and her life is never the same.
• Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John are carrying on their fishing business, Jesus walks by, and their lives are irrevocably changed.  
• Paul is being a proper religious rabbi, i.e., defending God, when Jesus shows up on the Damascus Road. Paul’s life is turned 180 degrees around and so are millions of others for the rest of history.  

God always works through the insignificant and unimportant—and does so in ways that are mysterious and wonderful.

Our lives are like that, are they not?  We are neither the famous nor the important—at least as far the world is concerned—and yet Jesus continues to show up in our lives at the oddest moments to work his miracle of grace.  Day by day, week after week, month after month, year after year, we come to this place and worship, pray, and listen to each other and the Spirit.  Day after day, week after week, etc., we go to work, do our jobs, go to our homes, spend time with our families, take our vacations, and literally spend our lives doing the ordinary.  Every once in a while, every so often, something dramatic happens, but most of the time we live in the ordinary.  I believe, as strange as it may sound, that is a message we need to hear amid the pomp and pageantry of Palm Sunday:  Jesus is most often found among the ordinary, among the normal, among the humdrum existence of life.  The presence of the Spirit of Christ does not mean that lights will be flashing and bells going off—rather, the Spirit is found in the day to day workings of human life.

Look where people found Jesus in the New Testament:  by the Sea of Galilee or walking along a dusty road; at a well at noon-time in Samaria or on a hillside teaching.  We find Jesus most when we look for him in the everyday aspects of life.  Someone has said that “the secret to life is doing the ordinary in an extra-ordinary way.”  I believe that to be not only true, but the essence of the gospel.  When we know the love of God, when we have been touched and transformed at the core of our being, then the ordinary becomes extra-ordinary.  

Do you remember the movie Mr. Holland’s Opus?  Mr. Holland is a would-be composer who turns to teaching in his early years in order to pay the bills.  As happens to many, he winds up teaching for most of his adult life until just before retirement his position is eliminated as surplus due to budget cuts in the school district.  On his final day at work he is summoned to the auditorium where, to his amazement, hundreds of his former students are gathered to express his appreciation and to play his opus, his life-long work which had never been performed in public.  Here he was, an ordinary man doing ordinary things and feeling like he was a failure.  However, through those ordinary things something extra-ordinary was happening:  lives were being touched and people changed as he went about his daily life.  The ordinary became extra-ordinary.

In “As You Like It” Shakespeare said that each of us, in our lives, “play many parts.”  True, but those parts are mostly bit parts, small roles.  For instance, of the 12 apostles of Jesus how many could you name?  How many are known apart from the lists in the gospels?  Other than the big three:  James, John, and Simon Peter, we hear virtually nothing of the others.  Even the apostles were ordinary people playing bit parts, but in so doing they were part of a movement of God that became the watershed of human history.

How could Jesus have accepted those accolades that day all the while knowing that by Friday the “Hallelujahs” would turn to “Crucify him?”  Why did Jesus accept these praises and cheers?  He knew that he was coming to Jerusalem to die; he made no secret of that to his disciples.  Further, Jesus was not one to seek public attention or acclaim.  Could it be that Jesus accepted this because he knew of the “ordinariness” of life?  Could it be that Jesus saw that for these this moment would be one that, after the resurrection, they would look back on and know that God had been with them?  Jesus saw that they would remember that day when the Messiah had come by and they had thrown their cloak or waved a palm branch—and the ordinariness of life would be transformed through memory into an extraordinary occasion of the love and grace of God.

God has a way of showing up in the most unexpected of ways and at the most unexpected times—and in so doing he graces our ordinary lives with the extraordinary.  A wedding ceremony—and how many have I done or you attended—not a usually emotional or moving service save for the families involved—and yet there are moments when the Spirit shows up and the service is graced with love beyond belief.  A funeral service—done everyday—and yet there are moments when the Spirit shows up in ways that are unexpected and grace is bestowed.  

A simple meal with family or friends becomes a special moment as we share together the stuff of our lives—and God is present.  A gesture by a neighbor, a visit to a shut-in friend, a helping hand to one who needs it, and before we know it God has been present and our lives are transformed.  How is it that those disciples on that road to Emmaus put it when they realized that they had been walking with the Risen Christ?  “Did not our hearts burn within us?”  Ordinary moments made extraordinary by the presence of Christ.

Some of you are sitting there and saying, “Wait just a minute.  I’ll agree that my life is ordinary, but don’t give me any of that ‘extraordinary’ stuff.  My life is just plain boring, as boring as vanilla ice cream.  I’ve never had anything extraordinary happen to me.”  That is the problem.  Ordinary and boring are not synonyms.  When we speak of ourselves and our lives as ordinary, we mean that we are just normal human people.  We’re not necessarily any smarter, better looking, more talented, or richer than others.  It does not mean that our lives are ignored by God.  The secret to living an extra-ordinary life as an ordinary person is to look at life and moments in extra-ordinary ways.  When we pause and look at our lives we can see moments pregnant with all sorts of possibilities that we overlooked in the time of their occurrence.  It is in the eyes of the seer that the ordinary becomes the extra-ordinary as we perceive the presence of God. 

There are two inherent dangers in being a person who wants to accomplish something:  one is that we will think that the “big event” is what life is about and so we will ignore all else in trying to achieve that moment.  When that moment has passed, then we will realize how shallow is that approach to life.  The other danger is that we will develop “routine” lives which have no hills or valleys—everything is the same:  flat.  When we ignore the presence of God in the ordinary of life then it will become flat, boring, and routine.  These are the persons who die at forty and are not buried until they are seventy-five.

In December or 1944 the German army launched an unexpected attack.  In what was known as the Battle of the Bulge, a deep wedge was driven into the Allied lines.  James Jones, in World War II, says:  

No one of these little road junctions stands could have had a profound effect on the German drive.  But hundreds of them, impromptu little battles at nameless bridges and unknown crossroads, had an effect of slowing enormously the German impetus ... These little die-hard ‘one-man-stands,’ alone in the snow and fog without communications, would prove enormously effective out of all proportion to their size.  James Jones, World War II, p.205

In the little battles of life lies the secret to success—and to seeing God.  Thomas Carlyle wrote:  “The tragedy of life is not so much what people suffer, but rather what they miss.”  When we fail to see the importance of the ordinary and of what God is doing in the ordinary stuff of our lives, then we are missing the presence of the Almighty and the essence of life is gone, vanished like a vapor on the breeze of the moment.  

Ordinary people—that’s who we are, just ordinary people living faithful lives and in the middle of this ordinary existence God shows up—and we are ordinary no more.