We were chatting it up on a Thursday in May.  It was Bell Choir rehearsals.  There was a break in the action, and so I made a comment to someone about the beauty of a photo she shared on social media.  It was a gorgeous side-by-side of ‘golden hour’—that last burst of sun in the lower sky right before it retires for the night.  This one was particularly magnificent, as it had come just after a late-spring rain.  She said, “the beauty of the moment just struck me!  I had to both thank God and grab my camera.”  Isn’t it amazing how we can be struck by God by surprise?  It can happen anytime, even an ordinary Wednesday after a spring rainfall.  It can happen during a conversation around bells on a Thursday in May.

 

       We are in the season of the church year called “ordinary time.”  It’s the longest season of the church year, but it can sometimes seem just so…ordinary.  Advent gets us excited for Christmas.  Lent has us deeply reflecting on the cross.  Easter has us jubilant over the victory in Jesus over the grave!  Easter culminates at Ascension and Pentecost.  But here we are in this season called ordinary.  It’s color is green (such an ordinary color).  We’ll be in it for the next 26 weeks!  No changes in the liturgical season until Advent approaches. 

 

       Ordinary time is not, however, just a long time to be ordinary.  As a matter of fact, the word “ordinary” (that the church uses to describe this season) comes from the word “ordinal” meaning “counted”.  So perhaps the church calls it “ordinary time” because the weeks are counted (13th Sunday after Pentecost, for instance). 

 

Or…and I would argue for “or”…

 

Or, the church uses “ordinary time” as a reminder for us to “count our days” as Psalm 90 asks, or as I like to say “make our time count.” 

 

       There’s actual nothing ordinary about anything that God gives us under the sun!  Nothing ordinary, at least, in the sense that there is nothing to be taken for granted, no one who is uninteresting, and no day that isn’t special.   My friend reminded me with her picture that God is capable of showing us the extraordinary, even in the midst of what we think is the ordinary.  Our time is precious. I think God knows that more than anyone.  And so time is to be counted as such: precious and valuable and not to be wasted.  God is wasting no time to showcase for us the beauty of creation, the peace of presence, and the animating life-force of the Holy Spirit unleashed in the world.  My brothers and sisters, there is nothing ordinary about that, except that it should be counted as great gift.

 

       This is a great season to ask God to open our eyes and see the world afresh.  To greet each day with the hope of what might come.  To give thanks each day at the view of the setting sun.  To embrace the “ordinary” of life as something to be counted, and to make it count ourselves.  Let us make the best of this ordinary time, and let us make our time we’re given count.   

 

 

              Happy and Blessed Summer!