Everyday on the way home from work, I inevitably hear the song, “Ordinary,” by Alex Warren at least once. There are a lot of listeners who trash the song and question its growing popularity.
Personally, I like the song and appreciate an insight which envisions the ordinary as not so ordinary, but rather a masterpiece. It seemed familiar to me, and then I remembered that years ago, I heard a preacher speak about our tendency, as human beings, to allow the miracles in our lives to lose their meaning, to become commonplace.
What a miracle it is to have someone to love us, to experience the birth of a child, to find a new job, grow a garden, experience a return to health or be graced with good friends. At first, our hearts are full of gratitude and love for God’s gifts, but too often, when love demands something of us, or work becomes a challenge, the miracle becomes routine, not worth the effort or fullness of heart with which we once embraced the gift.
This preacher used the example of the birth of a child, a miracle that fills us with love so profound it is hard to even describe. And then, he offered, the child becomes a difficult teenager and we ask, “God, why did you do this to me?” Of course, parents always have those moments of frustration or feeling overwhelmed. It doesn’t mean they don’t recognize the miracle of their children. But I understood what the preacher was trying to say.
Sometimes we lose sight of how miraculous those things we often consider ordinary really are. When once we might have been awed by the budding flower or the love of another person, there comes a time in our lives when we take these things for granted.
Even St. Augustine recognized it: “We take for granted the slow miracle whereby water in the irrigation of a vineyard becomes wine. It is only when Christ turns water into wine, in a quick motion, as it were, that we stand amazed.”
One of the greatest miracles, which most of us rarely consider during the course of our day, is the human heart. It was designed to beat about 100,000 times a day or 35 million times a year. That totals some 2.5 billion continual heart beats during an average lifetime.
This is the kind of miracle the psalmist understood well: “I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well.”
In the deepest part of us we recognize the miracles, we feel the joy of knowing the great love God imparted in creating the world for our good, and in creating us in God’s image. But living our lives can be challenging and losses painful.
We also may fall prey to the secular values that grow up around us, encouraging us to never be satisfied with what we have. It is in those times that our minds take over. We may dwell on the disappointment and become cynical about the miracles.
This is a good time to accept Jesus’ invitation to “come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” Even a prayerful walk around the block, breathing deeply and being mindful of the complexity and beauty of nature can bring us back to a sense of the miraculous that is life.
I have always been appreciative of Albert Einstein’s perspective on miracles. “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
Mary Morrell is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Spirit, the Metuchen Diocesan newspaper.