Bit Ordinary

When the English cricket team scraped a draw last series using a series of legal, but frustrating, time-wasting techniques, Aussie captain Ricky Ponting described the behaviour as 'a bit ordinary.' It wasn't meant to mean 'conventional'. Amongst giants he expected outstanding morals; idiot. But clearly the word 'ordinary' had overtones of sub-standard. Aussie meaning, or changing meaning?

For those who have the privilege of saying Morning and Evening Prayer each day we are now in a seasonless void called 'ordinary time'. The church's year begins at Advent and then proceeds through Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and Trinity. This takes roughly the six months, December to May.

Thereafter the weeks 'after Trinity', although including the non-standard and untimed festivals of summer holidays, harvest and the whole death and remembrance fortnight, can seem pretty ordinary in the Ponting sense.

I sense my fellow participants shuffling impatiently waiting for the time to become special again. I don't. I like ordinary.

'In those days the word of the Lord was rare, there were not many visions,' the Bible tells us as a preamble to the mighty impact of Samuel.

Enjoy the ordinary; it's good not to turn the tables over every week. Even so come Lord Jesus, I will say, but not just yet.