Choose your ordinary well

A week ago my daughters cleaned their room. When they went through the bookshelf they found multiple books they deemed no longer necessary. Among them was Sandra Boyton’s The Going to Bed Book. That was a staple in our house for years, and not just at night time. I could recite it word for word.

A few years ago I would have bawked if you told me the whole family wouldn’t be around the table for meals every night. But with working teens and kids at our house and kids gone to their friend’s houses, these days it is just as likely I will see other people’s children at our table at meal time as it is that I see my own.

And I failed to foresee the day my child would bring a member of the opposite sex into our home routinely for us to get to know.  

One day the ordinary everyday things you do now fade away. New ordinary everyday things take their place.  

I don’t know the date of the last reading of the The Going to Bed Book.

I don’t know the date our family last ate a meal at the same table at the same time.

Sometime in the last year the number of bikes in the drive diminished while the number of cars have multiplied.

And somewhere along the line the kids quit asking for freezepops and started asking for drumsticks.

And it’s impossible to know the day all my hair was brown now that it is speckled with gray.

And in this season of trying to hang on to my teens and young adult, I’ve found some of the ordinary things stick.  

Those praise songs I played when the children were young are in their heart. Every once in a while I catch one of them singing along when a song from way back comes on.

So I continue to put praise songs on, so they catch even a hint of it in their coming and going.  

And I see the importance of hanging on tight to the one thing we don’t want to lose.

We all, whoever is around and their friends or the person they are dating, all still gather around the Word for devotions and prayers at night.

With their comings and goings they may only get in three devotions a week, but we consistently keep providing for whoever is here.  

Zechariah 4:10 says, “Who dares despise the day of small things…”

The People’s Bible expounds on this to remind us God glories to work through the small and ordinary.

Choose the ordinary in your home well. Some of it will fall away with time. But by God’s grace some will take root and grow and produce fruit.