Living An Ordinary Life
Is there value in living an ordinary life?
We have lost the value of ordinary. In fact, there almost seems to be some silent shame in living an average life. Yet, the vast majority of us are average. President Abraham Lincoln once said, “God must have loved ordinary people, because he made so many of them.” God may have made lots of ordinary people, but we sure are driven for the extraordinary. And it appears we are on a frantic race looking for a vaccine for a bad case of the normals.
If Lincoln was right and God made a lot of us ordinary, does God’s Word have any counsel? Listen to the Apostle Paul in I Thess 4:11 as he challenges the people of Thessalonica to “aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you.” Well, that is not one of those hotel seminars of how to awaken the giant within you, is it now? So back to the question: is there value in living an ordinary life?
There is no greater example of the ordinary than the mother of Jesus, Mary. Here was this soon-to-be married teenage girl, still using Proactive on her face, and she is chosen to carry the God-man, Jesus Christ. Her claim to fame prior to this selection was summed up in her statement to the angel that told her how God was going to use her. Her response in Luke 1:38 was “I am the Lord’s servant.” What made Mary extraordinary was the fact that she was so ordinary. What made her extraordinary was that she was a young lady who had a deep trust in her extraordinary God. She let God be the “extraordinary” in her life. When we can truly rest in a long obedience of an ordinary life, then we can be the vessels for an extraordinary God to use us in ways we never imagined.
There is a great story told of G.K. Chesterton: One day the great British writer G.K. Chesterton was barreling down a street in London, preoccupied with weighty thoughts, his thick cape flying behind him. As he turned a corner, head down, he collided with a man rolling a grandfather clock down the narrow sidewalk. Chesterton brushed himself off, scowled at the man, and shouted, “Why can’t you just wear an ordinary wristwatch like everyone else?”
What a great reminder as we try to stand out in a celebrity culture. Stop trying to pitch your life as the next reality TV series. We are just ordinary people who serve an extraordinary God. So this week find some rest in a bad case of the normals. Don’t let the world convince you that ordinary is some sort of disease.
The next move is yours.
