We have entered the church season of Pentecost—the time between the Day of Pentecost (June 5 this year) and Advent I (Nov. 27 this year). Sometimes this is called ‘Ordinary Time’ because there aren’t any special feast days like Christmas or Easter.
On this blog throughout Ordinary Time, we’ll be looking at
several women in the Bible and considering what they might teach us about
living in the Ordinary Time we are in—which in some ways is rather
extra-ordinary. All times are in fact extraordinary because they are filled
with God. Elizabeth Barrett Browning reminds us:
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries
We can get stuck in the sameness of daily routine and
ordinary things and forget to even look for the flaming bushes around us.
Taking time to learn from women of the Bible may help us identify places in our
own lives that are both dry and dead, and that are alive with the promise and
hope of the Spirit of Life!
Kit Lonergan in the June 1 Day 50 meditation on Matthew 8
(healing of the demoniacs in the tombs) says, “I, however, have a different
response to the tomb. The tomb isn’t just where the dead are buried, but where
I keep all the broken pieces that I’d rather not let into the light just yet.
The fear I can hold. The “what if” questions. The shame. The recollections of
things done and left undone, and the foreboding of future transgressions going
forward. The quiet persistent voices that tell me that I am not worthy of the
light, should those boulders be rolled away from the entrance…But [those in the
tombs] beg Jesus to allow them to leave the tombs. It is both a liberating
thought and a terrifying one. What would it mean for us leave the tomb empty,
to move into the light of new life? What would it mean to let go of the claim
the tomb has on us, people with experience of loss, disappointment, and death?
What might we see emanating from the tomb rather than the creations of our own
making?”
Looking at the women of the Bible gives us a way to leave
behind the tombs of our old ways of thinking and acting. By seeing how God
acted in their lives, we are invited to live more fully into the people of
faith we are called to be.
