The First Baptist Church of Redlands
TA PE S T RY Woven Together In Love: Colossians 2:2
JULY 2016
ISSUE No. 7
A MESSAGE FROM PASTOR SHAWN
Ordinary Time Recently I went back to the Midwest to officiate at a wedding in northeast Ohio and then I went back to my house in Indiana, for the last time, in order to help sort and pack to get ready for the movers. Nearly every summer for the past 17 years has included at least one road trip. So the drive across the top parts of Ohio and Indiana seemed like the usual way to begin summer. Flat and green as far as the eye can see, with an occasional silo or church spire
“...it is the time of the year that we get into what it means to live day by day as followers of Jesus.”
poking above the trees and breaking into the expanse of blue sky, I began thinking about Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time almost sounds like a brand of lemonade, but it is the time in the church year that occurs during the summer and much of the fall. There is a bit of Ordinary Time between Epiphany and Lent as well. It is when the colors in the church are green. Ordinary Time at first glance is when nothing is happening, not Christmas, not Easter, not Pentecost, not Advent or Lent. It’s just Ordinary Time. And yet, surprise, it is the time of the year that we get into what it means to live day by day as followers of Jesus. I don’t know why the color for Ordinary Time is green, but I would like to think that it is because it is often the time that the most growth happens. In Indiana where there are four distinct seasons, the longest Ordinary Time happens when everything is green, really green, and it ends with the amazing blast of fall colors before everything is bare and dormant and Advent begins. Ordinary Time in the Midwest is when the corn and the soybeans grow and you can see the progress
from week to week. It’s when the zucchini and tomatoes grow in the gardens of true Hoosiers. Life is all around. In the same way in church, week to week, we hear about Jesus healing people, casting out demons and teaching us what the Kingdom of God is like. Jesus invites us to experience the Kingdom of God in our daily life. Just like we look forward to the big, sparkling moments of the year, like Christmas and Easter and even Pentecost, Christians think that it is during the “big events” of life that we grow in our faith – conferences, camps, concerts, revivals (especially in Southern Indiana). Yet it is actually in the regular, day by day activities of our walk with God that we grow the most. In regular Bible study, prayer, worship and meditation – even if we don’t feel anything happening – that is when we actually grow into the people God has created, redeemed and called us to be. It is during the regular, even at times mundane, practices that God transforms and develops us to be able to respond to what the world throws at us in a way that shows the Continued on Pg. 9