When we're used to them, we call them ordinary

Praise God that we don’t have to go to elaborate measures or extremes in order for Him to be present to us.  He speaks to us in the ordinary moments of the life we’re called to live faithfully.

Even His entrance to humanity was ordinary.  What was the message to the shepherds?  Today is born a Savior and He is Christ the Lord.  You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.  Of course one wouldn’t typically find a baby in a manger rather than in the home of his mother and father, however, even that is the most ordinary form of things not going the way you’d planned.  Traveling to a location to which many other people are also traveling, it could be expected that it would be hard to find lodging.  Yet through this moment, the Living Word of God became man. 

When I walk into the barn, I only see hay in our manger.  I hear the chickens clucking having found something exciting in the ground that’s just been scratched.  I sometimes hear the lowing of a cow who would like her breakfast.  However, as I’ve intentionally opened myself to them, now I see more than just my daily chores.  I see the lessons of God’s truth all around me. After I filter the milk from my cow, Brigid, I can see the beautiful cream rise to the top of the jar within a few hours. I smile because I know that’s how the lessons from God work as well. His whisperings and signs are often mixed in with the circumstances of our daily life. With patience, the message begins to rise to the top. His lesson is there from the beginning, but when I wait for Him to reveal it, the message—the cream—comes to the top of my mind and presents itself for me to “scoop” off and use in my life. 

God’s most consistent presence and work is in the small, often hidden, ordinary places of life. From bringing the incarnation of Christ to a young, non-influential woman in an unimportant town to be hidden from public view for 30 years, to revealing himself to His friends in the breaking of the bread, God is not limited to great spectacles. Of course He is capable of those, and some do get the call to put down their nets, leave their mothers and fathers, and live an outwardly radically different life. However, through my growing life as a mother and homesteader, I see God’s hand in the simplest moments of my daily life. Most often, God radically changes our heart by elevating the ordinary; even a simple glass of milk.