Ordinary Time

“Ordinary time” someone once called the time between Pentecost and Advent. Summer is a time to let some things go, like the school year routines. Many of us head off for vacations in an effort to reconnect with our families. Others may have to work out different arrangements for child care while they are at work. A friend of mine is taking a summer long Sabbatical to do some study, some reflection, and some writing. Ordinary time is a time for sitting with our Lord and learning new things. To these goslings everything is new and exciting. The same can be true for us, if we take time to stop and look and listen to God.

Summer can definitely be a time to reconnect with God in new ways. Many churches change their service schedule, have fewer (or no) choir members to assist with the singing, maybe even have a parish picnic or meet outside one Sunday. Some of us don’t like the changes. I would suggest that they are opportunities to experience God and worship in new ways. If you are like me, you get stuck in a rut-sitting in the same pew, next to the same people, Sunday after Sunday. But when things are changed, someone else may occupy ‘my’ pew and I might have to sit in a new location. If there is no choir, we all have to praise God more loudly. ‘Make a joyful noise,’ the psalmist says. God doesn’t care about our tunefulness, but about our joy filled hearts.

Ps. 37:4-5 says: “Trust in the LORD, and do good…Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

Maybe this summer, this ‘ordinary time’, will give you time to think about living into God’s desire for your life, which is the very thing that will make you fully who you are meant to be! Our Loving Father gives us all we need for each step and fills us with the grace to accomplish those things that will make you & me more fully the Child of God we are each created to be. From now through August, we’ll look at the lives of some of known and unknown heroines of the Bible to see how God’s love gave them the desire of their heart.

I invite you to join me throughout this ‘ordinary time’ on my blog for a look at some of the ways God interacts with them, because it is the same way God interacts with you and me. Perhaps through this blog you can find a bit of a weekly Sabbatical of your own and experience God’s love in a new way.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day. Thanks to our troops currently serving and all who have gone before. Memorial Day photos like this always brings to mind the WWI John McCrae poem In Flanders Field

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

My husband and I are off to Colorado (speaking of a vacation) and then to the Chama Book Fair next Saturday. If you are in the area, come up to lovely Chama, NM to meet a bunch of authors from NM who write everything from children’s stories to westerns to sci-fi and any other genre available! We’ll be at Cookin’ Books in Chama on June 5 from 11-3!

See you next week for our Ordinary Time Excursion with some of our faith ancestors this summer.