Everyday Miracles

There’s nothing ordinary about what’s known in the lectionary as “ordinary time.” Not Christmas, not Easter, not Pentecost, but the everyday miracles of God with us, of life on earth. Everyday evil also, the ongoing oppression of God’s children, the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Everyday miracles: the human family being fed and healed, corrected and forgiven. Everyday evil: the human family starving, murdered, suffering, exploited.

Ordinary time is the time when we try to understand and live the teachings of Jesus. Nothing ordinary about that—a lifetime worth of challenges instead.

We have again alternated the Sundays, with Shelley doing the first, third, fifth, and seventh, and Jim the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth.

July 7: Children Sitting in the Marketplace
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:10-19; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

I remember when my children were little, tired, and cranky. There was literally no way to please them. Whatever I did was wrong and led to tears and tantrums. Neither could they please themselves: crayons broke, shoes stumbled, books tore—all their perfect dreams came to nothing.