Let’s raise a toast to the “ordinary”! Having gone through months of what have been extraordinary events, there is something special about the plain ol’ ordinary. Routines that don’t change that much from day to day: Stretches and yoga exercises in the morning; a hot cup of coffee or tea in a favorite mug; a familiar bus ride or a trustworthy car (that really needs to be vacuumed someday) whose motor always turns over. A weekly phone call to a friend or family member; a football game on the weekend; a book waiting for us on the nightstand. Another day well-lived even if, from all appearances, nothing out of the ordinary happened.
The past months have stripped us of a sense of the routine and ordinary. That is why it is high time we reclaimed the mundane, the expected and comfortable as something meriting our grateful attention. There is no need to try and make the upcoming holiday season something “over the top.” It’s okay to have the month of December be fairly ordinary. Put up some decorations or a tree, if that’s your habit. Shop a bit, wrap packages, have the occasional mug of cocoa or watch a Christmas movie. Give yourself permission to have an ordinary holiday season this year.
Don’t forget—there was a lot that was ordinary that first Christmas long ago. The coming Messiah was born to a young woman after the manner of all births. The young family had limited funds and had to make do with whatever ordinary choices were at hand, such as a cattle shed and some straw in a manger. They relied on the hospitality of others. They had no finery or positions of power; for all intents and purposes, they were just an ordinary pilgrim family forced to come to Bethlehem for a bothersome government census. Yet in that ordinary series of events, there was something wonderful present.
And the season of Advent that precedes Christmas also reminds us to focus on the ordinary—for in simple things like lighting candles and offering our prayers to the God of both today and tomorrow, we discover how to live as people of hope, peace, joy and love. Advent reminds us that whatever unfolds as God’s plans for us will break forth amidst the ordinary and mundane. Marilynne Robinson put this idea quite well: “That most moments were substantially the same did not detract at all from the possibility that the next moment might be utterly different. And so the ordinary demanded unblinking attention. Any tedious hour might be the last of its kind.” (Housekeeping, p. 166)
May you give the coming Advent and Christmas seasons your “unblinking attention,” especially in the ordinariness of the days ahead. For into this ordinary world, God’s providential plans always unfold, Christ the Savior is born and lived and rose again, and the Holy Spirit still reveals new possibilities.
—Randy Bush