Ordinary blessing are what keep us going.

We are used to thinking about the big blessings of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost, which is good, for they are important things to think about. Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus. Christmas and Good Friday and Pentecost are important, but Easter is the chief festival of the church year.

If Lent ended with Good Friday, Good Friday with be Death Day and Lent a time of despair. Ordinary blessings wouldn't matter much. We would put flowers on graves to mask the awful emptiness of death and try to eke out some meaning in the vanity.

But Good Friday isn't the end of the story.

And because of that, ordinary blessings do matter.

We see God in the ordinary...

...the beauty of God in the flowers

...the face of Jesus in the poor, the alien, and the oppressed

...the mystery of knowing God in the smile of a child for its mother and father

...promises of creation renewed when the sick get better and the oppressed get liberated

...the love of God in the warmth of the sun

...the holiness of God in the crisp winter day

...God's sense of humor when I look in a mirror

...the expanse of God's grace in the depths of the forest and the sweep of the desert

We see God in the ordinary blessings of life; we know we are loved and we are renewed.

The photograph is one I took several years ago, crawling around the back yard, a perfectly ordinary sort of place.

Canon Rebel XTi