Day Seventy Seven - An Ordinary Life

Read Psalm 139 v. 1 – 10

I love reading, anything and everything. Well, maybe not everything! I’m not found of Romance and violent history books. But certainly biographies, there are so many fascinating facts about people in the limelight. People whose lives sound and therefore must surely be much more interesting and exciting than mine. It could equally be books about places I would love to visit, cities or countries, small remote villages in out of the way places, areas of beauty and wonder that it’s hard to imagine could possibly exist. I belong to our village reading group, we have a new book each month and then meet to discuss it, which makes you look and read books that otherwise you may never take off the shelf. When I’m wanting to really escape from the hurly burly of everyday life there is nothing better (as far as I can see) than a good mystery murder! Nothing too graphic or violent, just a good old fashioned ‘whodunnit.’

Eddie Askew states:- “P.D. James writes the best detective stories I know. Actually, that comment is less than fair to her. She writes fine novels, full of deep observation of people and their ways, and crime just happens to be the focus for her stories.”

In her novel “The Black Tower” a ten year-old boy is talking to an old priest. The priest is sitting at his desk in front of him. “It’s just an ordinary diary then?” asks the boy. “It isn’t about your spiritual life?” “This is my spiritual life.” The priest answers gently, “the ordinary things one does from hour to hour”.

How many of us try to separate the Spiritual from the ordinary parts of our live? How many of us put our life with God in a different box from the daily routine of our lives?

When I was a little girl our house was always full of people – mum, dad, sisters, brothers, friends and neighbours coming and going. No room to separate one part from another but when we went to grandma’s there was always a ‘special room’ – in those days in my part of the world we called it the ‘Front Room’. This room was a very special place, not for the ordinary everyday activities. Only for special visitors, for Christmas day, and especially for funerals when the coffin would be placed there in state, quiet frightening to a little girl, always a place that was kept clean, cushions that never had a dint in them, not a place you would wish to send time in. Though sometimes one would try and sneak in just to be in awe or in wonder and feel the mystery of the ‘room’. No mixing of the Spiritual and the ordinary life in my grandma’s house.

Are we guilty of thinking that we must have two different sides of our lives? The Ordinary and the Spiritual, some of us spend so much of our lives trying to be spiritual, choosing our words, our attitudes with care. Putting on an act, when I was showing off, my mum would say “no need to put on ‘airs and graces’ – prepending to the outside world, just be yourself”.

Not allowing God into the ‘ordinary’ in all we do results in shutting him out! The spiritual life is the ordinary life, lived with Jesus at the heart of our being, walking with us every step we take, every day of our lives. In Eddie Askew’s book he refers to a Christian that once said “God’s not just in prayer meetings and conventions, but in chips and peas”. Connecting with life in all its fullness.

Psalm 139 begins:-

Lord you have examined me and you know me, you know me at rest and in action; you discern my thoughts from afar, you trace my journeying and my resting-places, and are familiar with all the paths I take. For there is not a word that I speak but you know all about it…..

Let us live our ‘Ordinary’ Life as we follow in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus.

God’s Blessing

Betty Bentham