Stone #12: God in My Ordinary — A Branch In the Vine

Welcome to the last of my stones of remembrance, Remembering Stone #12.
For the intro to the series and links to stones #1-11, click on
Remembering Stones: Reflections on a Life Being Lived

For in him we live and move and exist.
Acts 17:28 NLT

I’ve come to learn over these years of walking with God that things aren’t always what they seem. The extraordinary is hidden in the ordinary. And let’s face it. You and I live quite ordinary lives. We compartmentalize our lives into secular and sacred. Then we go through each day wondering what this present life is all about. We don’t see the glory all around.

Well, I’m happy to say that the Christian life is very much about “ordinary.” And glory is surely all around. The Son of God who lives in us by His Spirit reveals Himself to us and through us in our ordinary existence on this earth.

When we walk in the Lord’s presence,
everything we see, hear, touch, or taste reminds us of Him.
This is . . . a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing,
is done, said, or understood independently of Him
who is the origin and purpose of our existence.

Henri Nouwen, The Living Reminder:
Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ (1977)

Yes, there have been highs and lows, joys and sorrows, ecstasies and deepest sufferings in my own life (see especially stone #6 ). But my ever-present God has manifested Himself in the ebb and flow of my real life on this earth. I have come to know everything in this time-based existence is a picture, a metaphor of an eternal reality. But my eyes have often been closed to the glory all around.

And so I started writing down what God showed me….first in notebooks and journals. But later (2011) on this blog and elsewhere. I only wrote when God gave me something to say. And these “things He’d say to my soul” became a series of bible studies and later my first book, The With-ness of Our God: Relationship in Every Dimension.

see https://www.abranchinthevine.com/with-ness-of-our-god for more details

Over the years I have written stories and metaphors about how I see God everywhere. Many of these posts in A Branch in the Vine, along with inspired poetry by my friend Penny Mandeville, have become a book of meditations, Glory in Disguised: Seeing God in Our Every Day (2023).

See https://www.abranchinthevine.com/glory-in-disguise for more details

And so day by day, God continues to assure me (and He assures you too),

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.
For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
2 Cor 2:9-10 NASB

God through His Spirit opens our eyes to see Him all around, even now, not just in the sweet “by and by.”

Author Richard Foster describes this life as “Incarnational.” God reveals Himself all around us, and “He fleshes Himself out” in His children as we walk with Him by faith, day by day.

The Incarnational Stream of Christian life and faith focuses upon making present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit. This sacramental way of living addresses the crying need to experience God as truly manifest and notoriously active in daily life.
Richard J. Foster, “The Incarnational Tradition: Discovering the Sacramental Life,” Streams of Living Water, p. 237

A Prayer
Lord, I believe that you are in me and with me and all around me. But many times, I am blind to Your Presence and Your activity. Please open my eyes to You, O God, and the spiritual realities filling my life — now and every day of my life on this earth. I want to experience You in Your fullness in all my “todays.” Amen.

No matter how ordinary a person may be, put God in that person,
and the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Major W. Ian Thomas, The Indwelling Life of Christ