The Ordinary Things

Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
Yes, our God is compas- sionate.
The Lord preserves the simple;
I was brought low, and He saved me.
Return to your rest, O my soul,
For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
Ps 116:5-7

A prayer makes sense only if it is lived. Unless they are ‘lived’-- unless life and prayer become completely interwoven, prayers become a sort of polite madrigal which you offer to God at moments when you are giving time to Him.
Anthony Bloom
Beginning To Pray

I love this thought. This Thanksgiving, I offered the prayer of thanks at the table and it seemed like a "polite madrigal," probably sounding like most of the prayers around the country. Oh, I am not doubting my sincerity, or anyone else’s for that matter, but I have been meditating on exactly what "our many blessings", that vague offering, really is.

I pondered beyond the obvious. We pray and hear the platitudes frequently, those familiar words that sometime just sound religious. But what are we really thankful for? Maybe it is the ordinary, the common, the tangible things of life that make our Creator smile when we thank Him.

Richard Foster in his book Prayer, calls it the prayer of the ordinary: "We pray the ordinary in three ways: first, by turning ordinary experiences of life into prayer; second, by seeing God in the ordinary experiences of life; and third, by praying throughout the ordinary experiences of life."

What does all of that mean? On a personal level, it means a day filled with thanks, for the ordinary things in my life, pausing on a busy morning to notice the deep orange - red leaves on that little pear tree in the corner of my backyard. It causes me to tune out the turbid sights and sounds of the traffic on the morning commute and look for other trees with the beauty of His paintbrush. God, how beautiful is your artwork!

My evening walks. What a great time to clear the mind, and thank Him for the cool autumn air, and...my dog. She’s a sweetie. Belle is there waiting each afternoon, with much more enthusiasm than me, ready for that trot around the neighborhood. Interesting, Belle decided long ago that I was the Alpha in the family, much to Annie’s mock dismay. "Belle, you are a traitor, just have to be with the daddy, don’t you?" she will chide. Belle spends her evenings beside my recliner, knowing my hand will slip down and stroke her head, often we both drift off....(Belle's greatest trick is to bark, not to the command of "Speak", but to the DeNiro line in Taxi Driver: "YOU TALKIN' TO MEEE???"--Something Annie taught her years ago.)

And then there’s the other four legged creature. The little cat that chose us as her keepers. "Don’t feed that cat, Mark, she will never leave," Annie warned.
"Too late, Stephen fed her right before we left this morning," I replied.
"Don’t tell that lie, Dad," Stephen interrupted, laughing.
The little gray tabby that wouldn’t leave. I named her Pepper. "Great name, so original, probably only 20 million gray tabbys named Pepper in America," Annie laughed. I said an ordinary, simple prayer, "Make that cat Annie’s cat, and I thank you Lord."

Being dog folks, it has been fun learning about the behaviors of cats. Pepper seemed to gravitate to Annie immediately, as the one she knew she had to win over. So where are we a year later? Pepper on the satin throne as we call it, Pepper at the foot of the bed, Pepper with more sweet talk than I ever got. Annie’s cat. Take that Belle! And thank you Lord. The ordinary blessings of life.

It is easy to be thankful for your family, I talk about SteveO frequently, but most of my allusions to the Annie have been in a humorous tone, portraying her as the voice of sanity in a cast of nuts. She is that, but it is all those "unseen" things...those ordinary things she does that make me pause and give thanks...I see those things actually, but don’t tell her enough how I appreciate the mundane tasks that she does on a daily basis, the tons of football and baseball laundry, the lunches for the next day, more laundry, dinner, dishes, homework helper, more laundry, all after a day’s work like giving our Governor his flu shot! (OK, let me brag a little, she won't.) But which is really more important? Gov. Riley probably thinks its the flu shot, but me, I'm thankful for her dedication shown through the day to day requisites of life. Teilhard de Chardin said:

Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things...as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.

So many other things to be thankful for, ordinary, real, small things. I think in thanking God for the little things, it shucks it down to the cob. It goes beyond the religious talk, the pontificating, the posturing, it goes to the core, where we live, and where He meets us.





Blessings to all...

Thanks and praise to Him,

Mark

Proverbs 17:22

A merry heart doeth good like medicine;
but a broken spirit drieth the bones.