Wednesday Read: The Gift of Ordinary Days
Most of life is ordinary. Not the dramatic moments you remember decades later but the unremarkable days that blur together - Tuesday morning breakfast, Thursday afternoon emails, Saturday evening dishes. You wake up, go through routines, interact with the same people about familiar things, go to bed, and repeat. These ordinary days comprise 95% of your life, yet culture trains you to undervalue them.
We celebrate the exceptional - wedding days, graduation ceremonies, promotions, vacations, achievements. Social media amplifies this, showing highlight reels that make everyone else's ordinary days look extraordinary. You scroll through exotic trips, career victories, perfect families, and exciting experiences while eating leftover pasta alone on your couch. The comparison is devastating because it's comparing your ordinary reality with everyone else's curated highlights.
But Scripture presents a radically different view of ordinary days. When Paul told the Colossians "whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord" (Colossians 3:23), he meant whatever - changing diapers, filing paperwork, washing dishes, driving to work, making small talk with coworkers. All of it can be sacred when done for the Lord. All of it matters.
Jesus lived most of his life in obscurity. He spent approximately 30 years in Nazareth working as a carpenter before three years of public ministry. Those 30 years weren't wasted preparation - they were life. He worked with his hands, served customers, probably argued with siblings, dealt with difficult neighbors, experienced the full reality of ordinary human existence. Those years shaped him for ministry, but they also had value in themselves.
Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century monk, wrote "The Practice of the Presence of God" describing how he experienced God's presence as profoundly while washing dishes as during formal prayer. He treated every mundane task as an opportunity for communion with God. His dishwashing wasn't less valuable than his prayers; both were worship when done in God's presence.
The problem isn't ordinary days - it's how we think about them. If you're waiting for life to start when something exciting happens, you're missing the life you're actually living. If you're enduring the ordinary to get to the exceptional, you're treating 95% of your existence as something to survive rather than live. If you measure life by memorable moments, you're ignoring the thousands of unremarkable days where character actually forms.
God works primarily through ordinary faithfulness, not spectacular moments. Abraham waited decades for the promised son. Joseph spent years as a slave and prisoner before rescue. David tended sheep for years before becoming king. Moses lived 40 years in Midian before the burning bush. The Bible records their dramatic moments, but most of their lives were ordinary days of showing up, doing what was required, being faithful in small things.
Jesus said: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much" (Luke 16:10). The little things - ordinary days, small obediences, unremarkable faithfulness - these prove you're ready for larger responsibilities. God doesn't typically give extraordinary assignments to people who despise ordinary faithfulness.
Today is probably an ordinary day for you. No major events, no life-changing decisions, just regular responsibilities and familiar routines. That's not a day to endure until something better comes along. That's your life. This is what you have. The question is whether you'll live it with intention or sleepwalk through it waiting for something more exciting.
