The Hymnal of the Ordinary

 

There are moments in life when we arrive at the corner of spectacular and stunning, when we find ourselves singing, “Celebrate Good Times” with Kool & the Gang.  No, I don’t even care that I just dated myself with that reference.  You know you are going to Google that song right now to listen and sing along!  But most of our life, many of our days are not lived at the intersection of Awesome Avenue and Amazing Parkway.  Most of us don’t hashtag every day as, “Best life ever” on social media.  There are days that are beige, ordinary, average, mundane, when most of the snail mail goes right into the recycling bin except for that one bill from your last doctor’s appointment.  Days when we are not quite sure where the hours went or what we did, but here you are getting ready for bed.  How do we sing amid the ordinary?  What do you do when the reverberations of Easter resurrection still faintly hum in your heart, but the tympani is stored away for the summer and there are no trumpets appearing in worship?  Yes, there is an afterglow of Easter, but reality has come knocking telling you that the laundry isn’t going to fold itself and don’t get me started on the cobwebs that are clinging to the light fixture over the table.  Here we are after Easter with the promise of new life, and yet things look suspiciously the same as they did before we visited the empty tomb.  Here we are after Pentecost, when the Spirit stirred transforming lives, but my oatmeal this morning still tastes the same.  How do we live betwixt and between; how do we faithfully inhabit the already and not yet? 

 

One way we do this is to pay attention to the on-going, unending melody of music in our soul.  One way we do this is to listen and lean in to hymns we sing in worship.  One way we do this is to be open to the sound of silence (not just the Simon and Garfunkel song ~ which you are also now going to Google), but actual silence.  The absence of sound, which is when your monkey mind loves to start chattering away.  “Great!” you mind says, “Now that I have your full attention, there are some recent mistakes and miscues and missteps, I’ve been wanting to cover.”  No wonder we reach for our phone in such moments!!  I invite you today to savor slowly with me the first two verses of the hymn, The Summons (one of my favorites).  I pray each syllable and sentence stirs something within you ~ connecting you to God’s presence which is right where you are.

 

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be show, will you let me name be known,

Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

 

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?

Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

 

May the One who is calling you in love be heard calling your name in life-giving ways this ordinary Monday.  Alleluia and Amen.