Divine Love Visible in Jesus, God's Living Word

Here it is, the Saturday after Christmas. No more doors to open on my Advent calendar. Not a single present to wrap. Or unwrap. No more Mr. Grinch Punch to concoct nor the mixing together of meatballs, grape jelly and barbecue sauce to stick in the crock pot. And Candlelight Christmas Eve will need to wait 362 more days to come ‘round again.

The days after this glorious event called Christmas are usually made of exhaustion, dragging Christmas trees covered in tinsel and hauling bags of bows and wrapping paper to the curb, and an overwhelming sense of loss. Not knowing what one should be doing now that this long-awaited holiday is over and the next big thing has yet to begin.

Some may savor the stillness of these days, while others fill up on football, Rotel dip and brownies. But, more than likely, it feels like a day stuck in between two major holidays that is in no way special. For me a feeling of restlessness seeps in. My thoughts don’t know quite where to land or what to focus on. Life seems so ordinary.

I am not a fan of the ordinary. Honestly, I am more into special and extraordinary. John Denver said in Annie’s Song, “You fill up my senses like a night in the forest, like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain.” * But it is Christmastime that fills up my senses. I love everything Christmas! The red, green and white decorations, Santas and snow globes, sugar cookie cut-outs and twinkle lights. And then there is the nativity… the ginormous one my mom painted and fired for me in her ceramics class years ago, the small homemade ones my 4-year-old granddaughter and I made from a store-bought kit, the teeny tiny nativity set from Italy brought to me as a souvenir from my son and daughter-in-law, plus the odds and ends of nativity shepherds, wise men and angels picked up at garage sales through the years. I love all these things, so it is disappointing and will soon be barren as I box them up and stash them in the attic where they must wait a full year before making their next appearance.

I loved Thursday’s GPS segment when it said exactly what I was thinking, “After witnessing such wondrous things, the shepherds returned to their ordinary lives… this mirrors our experience each Christmas–we celebrate these extraordinary events, then return to everyday routines.” ** How difficult this had to be for the shepherds. And us!

Ordinary. I don’t like it. I’m betting many of you don’t either. It’s kind of like vanilla ice cream with no chocolate syrup or watching a movie without popcorn or Coke Zero to go along with it. Dull. Not at all glitzy. Not even close.

But I am gradually getting better at it. During the past couple of years, I have been practicing being content with the unexceptional, nothing-special days of my very real life on this very real planet. I am figuring out how to enjoy where I am standing, wherever that may be. It isn’t a do-a-cartwheel or a jump-up-and-down kind of enjoyment. But more of an inner peace that God is present in those places just as he is in my celebrations.

If we only show up for the flashy or exciting, we are missing out on the majority of life. Because, face it, the majority of our days are ordinary… going to work, fixing meals, doing the laundry, mowing the lawn, driving kids to tons of activities, planning meals and writing out grocery lists or picking up poop out of the back yard.

Most of Jesus’s days were just like that (maybe not the picking up poop part). Thirty years made of mostly common, regular days, doing things like going to school, helping his mom and dad, playing with friends or going to work. And, yet, he had the hope of something else, something more.

It is how we show up on those days that define us, that make us who we are. In the quiet, in the boring, in the mundane. Here is what I have found in my acceptance of the unremarkable: gratitude for absolutely everything, power in thoughtfulness, peace in my circumstances whatever they may be (and my family has had some tough ones the past few years) and a closeness to God that is hard to explain. This type of living changes ordinary days to days of substance and meaning.

John 1:14 tells us that God became flesh and lived here with us. How incredible is that? His name was Jesus and he was made up of flesh and bone and lungs and capillaries and probably had aching feet sometimes and a sore back. He knows us because he lived this life, our life. He is with us in the heartbreaking details of our lives, as well as those ordinary days after Christmas.

Barbara Brown Taylor encourages us to see the holy in the everyday routines of life: “My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them.” And she later says, “Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.” ***

This is what ordinary days are for. Seeing the holy in all things.

Come to think of it, the unremarkable is extremely remarkable. We just need to look for it.

* John Denver (1974), “Annie’s Song” [written & recorded by John Denver]. On Back Home Again album. RCA Records.
** Bruce Larson, The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 26: Luke. Nashville: Word, Inc., 1983, p. 52, quoted in Thursday, Dec 25, 2025 GPS.
*** Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World. New York: Harper Collins Publishing, 2009.