I’ve been thinking about the extraordinariness of the ordinary.
This morning I found this poor little fella on the window sill on my way down the stairs. Take in something of it’s beauty, it’s intricacy, it’s delicacy, how real it is. To me, there’s something morbidly captivating about gazing at it. Something about it’s lifelessness helps sharpen my focus on my own life-fullness, on what it is to be alive.
We were talking about Matthew 28 at the student night at church last night, discussing how it is we become almost numb to calling Jesus our Crucified King. We have a giant cross at the front of our church – a reminder of death, of the sacrifice that was made for us. Seeing the cross should do for us what this wasp did for me this morning, remind us what it is to be alive through the clarity that comes from facing death.
We perhaps become too accustomed to what the cross is; it is the equivalent of having a giant guillotine, or a hangman’s noose, or a gun, as our religious symbol. We too easily forget what the cross meant; for the Jews, a ‘Crucified King’ would have been a contradiction in terms. Crucifixion was a criminal’s death, a humiliation, to have been defeated. But we see the death of Jesus and declare it to be the source of life, a glory not a humiliation, a victory and not a defeat. He is our Crucified King.
Christianity is all about life and death. It is the way to life and the victory over death. And so each time I look out at the weather, stomp over crisp leaves, or marvel at how dark it is at 4pm, I remember the way to life and that there is victory over death. For the changing seasons are a reminder of time passing, of life growing nearer to death. That I should rejoice in my day for this day will not be around again.
And so it is that I have put here some photos of my ‘ordinary’, of my day by day, through which I find and see the extraordinary: the way to life and the victory over death.
(thanks for the tea-towel Chris, made me chuckle and all my friends were very amused too!)
2 Corinthians 4:10 + 16
’10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body……16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.’
thejoyofrachel 