The sacred ordinary

A week ago I was sitting under the teaching of Eugene Peterson, pastor and teacher, man of God.  Not only did he translate the version of the Bible we know as The Message, but he wrote countless other books and articles.  I was impressed with his humility, his own ordinariness.  He would not be someone you would pick out of a crowd, a man of insignificant stature, he does not dress to impress; instead he looks more like someone's beloved grandfather.

Among a million other words, Peterson wrote, "His (Christ's) entire life was lived in a sacred ordinary that we are apt, mistakenly, to call the secular."

I've been thinking about that ever since I read those words - the sacred ordinary.  Christ lived as a human, confined to a human body, in some sense, working a job for 30 years, worshipping with other humans, then living in relationship with the twelve for three years.  He walked, talked, ate with, kept company with ordinary men and women...living a life not a lot different from ours, an ordinary life- one we would not think inappropriate to call the sacred ordinary.

I wrestled with the phrase "sacred ordinary," trying to make sense of it.  I guess it boils down to our recognition that everything we do matters because there is no ordinary for the believer.  Everything we do matters to God - everything.  Not only do we take him everywhere we go, but everything we do reflects on him.  I think we think we can have secrets, that because no other human sees something we do or hears something we say or knows something we think, that it doesn't matter.  But there is that unseen world that does know all of those things.

Everything we do is done out of the sacred  - that place where Christ dwells. We carry the sacred with us, whether we like it or not.  There is no ordinary, and the secular exists only for the one who does not know Christ.  Faith is that dividing line between the sacred and the secular, and that truth weighs heavily on my mind today....