Just an Ordinary Day

Did you wake up to an ordinary day this morning? You know the kind I mean… the kind of day when the house looks like a bomb has blown up in it overnight, a day when the alarm didn’t go off so everyone is running late, the kids sent a glass of juice flying all over the kitchen and you can’t find the car keys.

After you get everyone off to school and work still it doesn’t stop. The phone rings off the hook– A child calls from school because they forgot their lunch, you can’t figure out how to pay these bills, you dump a can of paint on the carpet and when dinner rolls around you don’t have half of the ingredients you need to cook it.

Years ago, I was having a very bad ordinary day. That same day I ran across a poem called Just an Ordinary Day. God has a way of “gently(?)” hitting me over the head with something like that. I wish I could remember the author to give her credit but I can’t.

She started the poem by describing an ordinary day like the one I described above but at the end of it she said “in times of war and famine and walking away from a loved ones grave, it is at times like these people cry out for and long for an ordinary day.”

How right she was. I know that in my own life that is true. How I have longed for a “normal, ordinary day” at times when my heart was hurt and broken. So now when I have a day with all of its ups and downs, I am so grateful that it was just an ordinary day.

There’s a verse from the Bible I love. Because many of us hear it so often it tends to lose it’s meaning but I want you to read the words and think about them. It is perfect for an ordinary day and at the end of the day we really should think of this verse:

Psalms 118:24 “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

We need to put things in perspective and really dwell on our blessings more and our everyday “miseries” less.

Today I can say that verse and rejoice but there have been times when it was very hard for me to embrace it, so God gave me other verses to comfort me on my unordinary days. You may be in a situation where you are longing for an ordinary day so just cling to this verse:

Psalms 34:18 “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

For some of you I know it hurts so badly that at times you can’t even pray but don’t panic or worry because God understood us enough to help us even at those times and told us to lift each other in prayer.

I love the story of the paralyzed man in Mark 2 where his four friends went to great lengths to lower him through the roof to bring him to Jesus for help. At times we are so emotionally and spiritually paralyzed that we can’t do anything for ourselves. This is why we have friends– for those times when we can’t help ourselves. This is why we are to pray for each other.

So many of you are praying for us and I want to thank you because you never know when the one you are praying for may be having an unordinary day and needs you to “lower” (lift) him to Jesus for “healing” at that moment.

May God bless you with an ordinary day today and tomorrow.

      -Jill

 

Photo By: Drew Coffman