Monday I opened my lectionary app as I do every morning, to “ordinary time.” Two thousand years of tradition have knit patterns of reading through Scripture, and remembering history, to the calendar. Actually thousands of years before that, ancient cultures did the same. The exodus of the entire people group descended from Abraham’s sons from Egypt, an enduring story of release from slavery and return to home, is tied to the cycle of moons and harvests. We are people of body and spirit, so the joining of timeless truth to tangible times helps us stay both grounded and growing. The post-Jesus lectionary revolves around anticipation of his birth, and annual remembrance of his death and resurrection. The overlay of his life and the ancient Hebrew festivals imbues both with deeper, broader meaning.
In the agrarian cycle, the feast of Pentecost came 50 days after Passover. Pentecost celebrated fruits, harvest, produce. The beginning of provision from the gardens of the land, the seed gone into the ground and dying now giving life to a multiplicative abundance. Fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, ten days after his ascension, as his people gathered for that feast, the Spirit was visibly and audibly revealed to be active in, not just a limited priesthood, but all who believed. The miracle was communication, understanding, connection.
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After such a dramatic Sunday, an undeniable wave of inexplicable capacity poured onto countless humans, one hardly expects Monday to dawn as “ordinary time”.
I can only imagine that the brand new community of Jesus-following disciples felt that their time would never be ordinary again.
Our 2025 has lurched through the far-from-ordinary so far. As Christmas turned to Epiphany to Lent to Easter to Pentecost, we turned from our family-holiday (first time together for that in a few years) to annual Serge meetings to launching the new year in Bundibugyo with school and work . . . only to be shockingly disrupted by the sky-high-abnormal routine test and subsequent discovery of extensive aggressive prostate cancer that catapulted us back to America. We urgently began months of biopsy, scans, waiting, consults, injections, pills, radiation, staying with kind friends for weeks and months. . . . and between all that both of our mothers had the roughest stretch of their 9-decade lives, and Serge changed executive directors (planned and peaceful but still a major shift with celebratory events) for the first time in 2 decades. Suddenly, unlike the rest of our adult lives, we are basing our future from the North American not the African continent, and we have a diagnosis that clouds the view of how long that will last.
So the liturgical announcement of “ordinary time” jarred my eye this week. I think we sense the extraordinary more readily.. . . But ordinary is how we actually live. Crisis lasts for a season, but the cycle of the year, the decade, the century keeps turning. The seismic shift of the presence of God with us as a community, with each of us as individuals, is now ordinary. The post-diagnosis, post-pentecost road leads from this week’s doorstep, and it is our calling now to find ordinary ways to live by faith.
The new normal: post-pentecost, we are not alone, the Spirit is inexhaustibly available. And the perennial plan: what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God? Perks of mentoring amazing people is that we learn so much from them, and one of my colleagues six months ago shared her “3 words” for the new year. . . . which challenged me to ponder mine. Over several days, what came to mind was this: Mend, Send, Attend. Ok I have a weakness for rhyming, I admit it. But by mercy we mend the frayed edges of an unraveling world by practicing justice, by righting wrongs. And we love mercy as we serve others, sending them forward to thrive and lead and live. And humbly we attend to the truth and beauty of God’s presence all around us, in his word, his people, his world. Every ordinary day draws out from us some opportunity to mend creatively so that hurts are healed. To send selflessly so that others are blessed. To attend to the unseen realities that guard and gird us all. Those three words formed for me before the January bombshell of prostate cancer, but cancer is part of the ordinary path through life for many, many people.
As we walk into the ordinary of a much altered life, we pray that Scott is mended, that every cell is choked by the medicine and zapped by the radiation. And we pray that our 11 teams and countless partners in 6 countries across East and Central Africa keep mending the sorrows that seem to engulf them and their neighbors, that wars cease and hunger is fed. The year 2025 finds us solidly into the third third of life where we labor to send new leaders forward, and our diagnosis makes that even more necessary. So we pray for wisdom and grace to support our kids and our colleagues. In ordinary time, we have to build conscious habits of attending to the important and not just be lulled by what is easily seen. That can be bird watching or Bible reading or poetic prayers. Paying attention.
Grateful for the great cloud of witnesses that read and pray, that walk into “ordinary time” with us, mending, sending, attending. On both sides of the Atlantic we need a fresh infusion of the Spirit to do justice (even for immigrants), to love mercy (even for the marginalized minorities), and to walk humbly with our God.
ORDINARY TIME LOOKS LIKE:
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And to remember MEND, SEND, ATTEND . . 3 pictures
