ordinary-life

The wretchedness of ordinary life, endured so gaily when it is part of our normal existence, is made far worse when it comes as something new, and is exaggerated by the working of the imagination.

The "show business," which is so incorporated into our view of Christian work today, has caused us to drift far from Our Lord's conception of discipleship. It is instilled in us to think that we have to do exceptional things for God; we have not. We have to be exceptional in ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, surrounded by sordid sinners. That is not learned in five minutes.

Tea with milk and sugar is so ordinary. We want to see a change, feel the necessity to bring colours other than the ordinary, in our lives. We feel liberated, enriched, superior. But we lose a part of nature, the ordinary beautiful essential nature in doing so.

There is something magical and transformational about saying __es_ to God. When you take His hand, step out of that boat (your ordinary, comfortable life), and be brave. Instead of spending your lifetime living in fear and playing it safe, you boldly walk in obedience. God makes you brave.

Peace can only be found in what your extraordinary imagination has defined as an ordinary life.

I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering_ I just don__ understand why he__ able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate. Then again, I suppose so much of what stays with us is often insignificant. The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather__ll the things so unimportant they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren__. I often think of the Chinese red bathrobe I had when I was twenty-seven years old; the sound of our first cat Charlie__ feet on the linoleum of our old house; the hot rarefied air around aluminum pot the moment before the kernels of popcorn burst open. I think of these things as often as I think about getting married or giving birth or the end of the Second World War. What is truly amazing is that before you know it, sixty years go by and you can remember maybe eight or nine important events, along with a thousand meaningless ones. How can that be?You want to think there__ a pattern to it all because it makes you feel better, gives you some sense of a reason why we__e here, but there really isn__ any. People look for God in these patterns, these reasons, but only because they don__ know where else to look.Things happen to us: some of it important, most of it not, and a little of it stays with us till the end. What stays after that? I__l be damned if I know.(pp.174-175)

I thought that nothing enormously bad or good had happened to me during my life. All the normal things had occurred. I had lived a completely unremarkable life. I wanted only my home, and the love and safety of those around me, nothing else. I knew there was no particular reason why I was put on this earth, but here I was and I was glad to be here, awed by the beauty of it. It was a perfect moment. (p.99)

After all these months, lying there, unable to move a leg or a foot _ how could he find perfection in such an average day?Then I realized that was the whole point.

Youth is the most suitable age to enjoy the life completely or to work diligently for the life, what you decide makes your rest of the life ordinary or legendary respectively.