The liturgical calendar tells us that we are in the season of "Ordinary Time."   Back when I was growing up as the son of a United Methodist minister, the church in those days seemed to have an aversion to sounding "too Catholic," so in its calendar it changed the Roman Catholic designation of "Ordinary Time" to counting the Sundays "after Pentecost."   So throughout the summer and fall you would count so many Sundays after Pentecost, break for "Christ the King, Christmas and Epiphany" and then resume counting the after Pentecost Sundays until Lent and Easter.   Somewhere along the line Methodists and Presbyterians and other mainline Protestants gave up counting the Pentecost Sundays and shifted over to "Ordinary Time" just like the Catholic Church.  It is all part of the trend in which we mainliners have become less afraid of liturgics (and Roman Catholics for that matter--which was never an issue for me because Mom is RC and I've never been afraid of her!) in recent years.  I can still remember when the Sacrament of Communion was celebrated as seldom as possible, then it went to once a month, and then 30 years ago in seminary we actually had worship professors telling us "The Eucharist" should be celebrated every week and that we were the new class of clergy who should see to it that it happens.  It's only thirty years later and I am actually for the first time in my career serving a congregation where we have begun to offer Communion every Sunday in our 8 A.M. worship in Woodrow Chapel.  Sometimes it takes awhile for something to catch on, I guess.  But lo and behold, we have folks who come regularly and who have told us how much they appreciate the opportunity to take the Sacrament every week.  They once said of Presbyterian ministers in the American colonies that if they served Communion once a year that was okay, but if they served it twice a year they wouldn't be ministers there for very long!

Regardless of the message the liturgical calendar sends us, life is not always that ordinary during Ordinary Time.   I think about this past week as a case in point.   At the same time that we have been watching Egypt erupt (somewhat suprisingly) in what appears to be a spontaneous call for democracy now (even the fanatical Islamic organizations whose politics have little to do with democracy were caught flat-footed), closer to home we have been battling what I hope has been the worst winter storm we will have for the season.  It has been a storm that reminds us how vulnerable we are.  When the ice weighs down the power lines and the wind starts whipping, we suddenly have to figure out how we are going to deal with the prospect of a home with no centralized heat.  No, life has not been too ordinary in this past week.

As I think about life at Worthington Presbyterian Church, the truth is that for some segment of this church family no given week is ordinary regardless of what happens in Egypt or on the weather map.   Births are celebrated, afflictions are lamented and endured, and overall, members experience wondrous joys or untold sorrows in one way or another every week.   Just because life may be somewhat ordinary for us in any given week, we can be sure that this not necessarily the case for someone else in our congregation.

Perhaps the message we should be sending and receiving in "Ordinary Time" is that it is our conscious journey of faith in God that should be an ordinary part of our daily living.   Rather than wait for special occasions, or the "high holy days" of our liturgical calendar, we should endeavor to live lives in which we regularly acknowledge that God is very present and very real to us in everything we otherwise call "ordinary" or even "mundane."  One of the things I have always noticed when I have read the writings of the "saints" of the church, or of those who have been identified as part of the "spiritualist" tradition, is that they take nothing in life for granted.  Many have the gift of experiencing the wonderful presence of God in things that at first glance I just took as ordinary.  I'm not sure I am capable of being as aware as many of them are, but I am grateful for the opportunity to read their devotional thoughts and gain better insight about the fact that with God there is nothing very ordinary about my life at all. The very fact that we have lungs that take in oxygen with every breath, which then enlivens every part our being, is an amazing minute-by-minute miracle each day of our lives.   Every day becomes an opportunity to know divine blessings anew, and give thanks.   May your ordinary time become extraordinary in that way!

Peace, Jeff