Getting the “Extra” Out of the Ordinary
How many of you were fascinated (or possibly still are fascinated) by superheroes?
(It’s OK to admit it…)
My personal favorite by FAR was Superman.
The amazing transformation from Clark Kent to Superman was my dream, my aspiration, and my hope!!! I basically memorized the entire movie.
There’s something so exciting about the thought of being Superman. He even has an ice cream named after him!
There is something so mundane, boring, and ordinary about the thought of being Clark Kent – a reporter for the Daily Planet. Bound to wearing his ordinary suit, in an ordinary job, in his ordinary office, with his ordinary problems and the inability to even talk confidently to Lois Lane – the love of his life!
As I often think about what it means for us ordinary human beings to be in a relationship with the living God – I wonder how many of us dream that God will transform and transport our ordinary lives into lives of superheros.
That we’ll somehow be swept away by God who will save us from the daily realities of being a human being.
What I love about Jesus, and love about the New Testament, and love about how we see God use people – is the “down to earth” nature of it all! What we see in the New Testament is NOT human beings being transported from “everyday life!” No. We see God do extraordinary things amidst the ordinary moments of life — within the context of the everyday, ordinary, 9-to-5, pay-your-bills, raise-your-kids, kind of life!
The writer Ron Dreher makes this observation:
Christians, especially Christian intellectuals, live as if the faith was about ideas, and how we relate to ideas in our own minds. Thinking about God is not the same thing as being with God, and in God. This is my problem. Everydayness is my problem. It’s easy to think about what you would do in wartime, or if a hurricane blows through, or if you spent a month in Paris, or if your guy wins the election, or if you won the lottery or bought that thing you really wanted. It’s a lot more difficult to figure out how you’re going to get through today without despair.
It’s actually within the mundane, moment-by-moment experience of life where God wants to meet us, use us, and shape us into His image.
Zack Eswine in an amazing book called Sensing Jesus puts it this way:
Jesus delivers us from trying to become something that only He was meant to be. Right in front of us – is everything we’ve longed for! Jesus intends to content us with a courageous joy in the mundane…. No matter how great or gifted we are, God invites us to Himself for the sake of local people in a local place… If you are wearing yourself out trying to be and do more than this, Jesus is calling you to stop all of this tramping about and come finally home. The great work to be done is right in front of you with the persons and places that His providence has granted you.
While we may have “Superman” aspirations for our lives, let’s fight to be faithful and allow God to do His “extra” amidst our ordinary lives. I’m convinced if we do this as husbands, wives, families, friends, pastors, teachers, nurses, students… we will see a quiet, amazing, unbelievable revolution take place that won’t require a new website, Facebook campaign, or branding agency; it will simply require you and me trusting that “the great work to be done is right in front of you with the persons and places that His providence has granted you.”
God bless you in your ordinary life!
Ryan Snow
