We love events.
Birthdays, weddings.
Open houses, parties
Christmas, Easter.
We plan and worry,
We invite and remind.
We prepare and decorate and lose sleep.
We wait and then we celebrate.
But then we have to clean up. And catch up.

Some of us love all these pieces.
But truth be told, many of us don’t love events.

Sometimes, this is because the event is a reminder of what we don’t have.
For some of us, this is our first Father’s day without our father. Or Father-in-law.
Just this week I stood with two brothers as they watched their dad dying.
Father’s day and mother’s day are hard for many people because they don’t have a mother or father, they’ve been abused or abandoned by the ones they do have, or they feel like they are failing as a father or mother.
I’m not trying to make happy people sad.
I’m trying to make sad people not alone.

Sometimes our fear or frustration with those days is because anticipation is never as good as the thing. We shop and shop and shop and the reaction isn’t what we expected. We plan and cook and clean and no one notices. We have a clear picture of how we or how others should feel and the feeling doesn’t happen. And we are disappointed with the day. With the event.

I think I can help us.

In the church calendar there are several events. Christmas. Good Friday, Easter. Pentecost. There are seasons. Advent. Lent. There are events that only some of us know about. Feast of the annunciation. Feast of the ascension. Trinity Sunday. Which was yesterday.

But most of the church calendar is what is called Ordinary Time. Just like most of life is ordinary time.

Most of our lives is lived between the big events, between the Sundays, between the anniversaries, between the birthdays. Between the awards and the diplomas.

Most of our lives is the hard work, the sleep and sleeplessness, the daily conversations. Most of our lives is waiting for the medicine to work, waiting for the words to come, waiting for the mail and the Wells Fargo wagon. Waiting for the revelation from God about the job to take or the place to move or the person to marry or the car to buy.

Most of our lives feels like waiting for God to show up.

But what if ordinary time is as holy as the holidays?
What if God is as present in the waiting as in the working?
What if God cares more for us that for the event?

What makes ordinary days holy is the presence of God. And since God is always present, every day is a holy day, not just holidays.