The Normal, the Ordinary

Last night Courtney and I were reading through the new devotional book that I picked up over Christmas break. It's a book that has 365 days of lectio divino, and we were prayerfully working through a small bit of Scripture focusing on when You gave manna to the Israelites in the desert.

The commentary in the devotional was centered around the idea that the Israelites had a need, they asked You to provide, and You did. But the Israelites didn't recognize that You had provided right aways. That's why manna is called manna, because that literally means "What is it?" You provided enough for them but they didn't immediately realize You had provided it.

So I wonder what I am asking You for. Over the past several months my deepest and longest felt request has been for You to come and bring Your presence into my life, because I have not had the same feeling of intimacy that has been present before. Without the feeling, I've often felt like You aren't with me, despite Your myriad of Biblical promises stating the contrary. Life has at times felt fairly normal and ordinary, and I have felt that way too. And if I'm honest, I have really wanted You to come in and spice things up, every day giving me some exciting Spiritual experience.

I put a lot of eggs in the Gideon basket as well. I just kept thinking that since I hadn't had a spiritual experience of closeness and tear-jerking awe for a long time that You were just saving all that up for his birth. And while there was an awe in watching my first son be born, it was not intense. It was not overwhelming. It didn't even make me cry. It was awesomely natural. Watching him come out, living with him for the past couple of weeks, he blows my mind but everything also seems very ordinary.

I mean, I'm loving it when he does these little half awake grins that don't mean anything, but that's what babies do. I can't help but telling him how big and strong he is when he stretches out and throws up a rockfist, but that's real normal as well. I both complain and brag about what a good pooper my little boy is, and I think that ordinary too. What I guess I'm trying to say is that even in one of the biggest transitions of my life (in a good way), I've not felt the awe.

I remember in the New Testament when the people were always wanting to see a sign. Maybe it wasn't so that they could believe, maybe it was just so they could feel the supernatural awe. I am so like one of those people. "Come and meet me, fill me up with Your presence, make my hair stand on end because of Your closeness," but that's kind of pathetic. What about all the grandeur in the ordinary, what You have already provided for me that I might be missing because I'm complaining.

I think that's the strange backwards lesson I've learned so far from Gideon. But now, I still do need Your help in recognizing the ordinary, or someone else to help me see You in my life. Thanks for my son and my wife. Continue to be awesome by protecting them and showing up in our normal days.