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Luke 2:8-9 “And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.”
The past few weeks have been relatively uneventful. Nothing critical happened nor were there any major church services. It has been an ordinary period of time. But is this alright? Or does this indicate some kind of stagnation?
Perhaps not. And the way God worked in people’s lives throughout Scripture seems to suggest so. Yes, it is true that God can do great and wonderful things when His people gather to worship and encounter him. (e.g. Acts 2) Yet, the opposite is true as well. Many critical encounters with God happened in very ordinary settings:
Do you see that pattern? God does not always encounter us in a big, spectacular, and amazing way. He also meets us in the ordinary. That means that He can encounter us in our day-to-day lives, maybe in the middle of our homework and emails, or on a bus ride, or even while doing our household chores!
In fact, Christians have realised this long ago. That is why the season we are currently in is known as “Ordinary Time”, a long period between Easter and Advent. It is ordinary because we do not celebrate any particular mystery of our faith (i.e., incarnation at Christmas, crucifixion at Easter), but rather the mystery of Christ with us in all aspects of our lives. God transforms every aspect of our human experience into a potential place of encounter with the Holy One.
Is your life rather routine and regular now? Are you back to the grind of life? That may well be perfectly normal. Not every moment of our lives has to be extraordinary. Because God can and has always used the ordinary to speak to us and work in our lives.
Let us open our hearts and listen– God is most definitely speaking to us ever so extraordinarily in our ordinary lives.
The Most Rev Dr Titus Chung
Primate of South East Asia
