My seat at the kitchen table affords a delightful view of the old oaks behind our house. I watch, while sipping my morning coffee, as birds swoop in and out of branches extended like willing arms to offer a place of rest.
A little later the does make an appearance. They’ve come for the bountiful breakfast of acorns the trees have scattered on the ground beneath their sheltering cover of leaves, still green even in this winter season.
The scene plays out nearly every morning - ordinary moments in our ordinary lives. The trees don’t receive accolades for the small part they play in the world around them. They simply do what they’ve been created to do.
In an age where gaining fame and attention has seemingly taken on a life of its own, I’m touched by their silent testimony of a life well lived. I, too, want to be content with living out the ordinary moments of my life in a way that gives them the value the Lord places on them. Those moments that go unseen and mostly unrewarded but that somehow change the world for the better.
When a mother sits rocking a little one in the wee hours of the morning; when a dad leaves before the sun rises to go to a challenging job, when a teacher gives up a well-earned break to work with the little one who is struggling, when a young boy holds the door for the elderly couple, when a parent agonizes in prayer over the prodigal, when someone sends a card just to say “I’m thinking of you.” In a thousand little ways the ordinary becomes sacred, and the lives those ordinary moments touch are blessed.
