Kira

Ordinary time.  That's what the church calls the time after Pentecost.  Ordinary time.  After the miracle of miracles, the resurrection of the Son of God, an extraordinary thing happens to a paralyzed group of scaredy cat disciples behind closed doors on the streets of first century Jerusalem. They become multi-lingual, articulate, and radically extroverted.  A small group of uneducated, ethnic hicks take on the world with their message of salvation. They can't help but share the extraordinary story and the implications and meaning behind it, not only for themselves but for the entire world--the cosmos.  Silent, fearful, eyewitnesses become demonstrative, powerful spokespeople for a movement that dares to usher in an age of forgiveness, generosity, mercy, and hope.  We call the time after that, ordinary.  And it is.  Ordinary, yet soaked in anticipation of what is yet to come.  What they saw and heard and said and did was only the beginning.  The story continues in ordinary time; in our ordinary times.  
An ordinary and familiar story:  She is a recent college graduate without a job, living at home in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.  She is in transition., in limbo.  Not yet fully realizing her potential, not satisfied, but not complaining.  She is single and relatively content to be.  She is helping her parents through a cancer battle, her brother through a divorce, and maybe some others too.  She is passionate about health care injustice.  She is merciful and compassionate.  She cries when things are not going as they should. She wears her emotions. She likes to have fun. She is devoted to her family and friends.  She loves her nephew and niece. She likes to relax.  She doesn't have much money.  She has no current job prospects,except in retail. Her car is dying, too.  Something about a bad transmission and second gear.  She is going to the beach anyways.
Kira is also faithful. At 22 this is not a small matter. I've known her since she was a teenager in Lutheran confirmation. She wants her life to be meaningful, to do a big thing.   She wants to make a difference and suspects that she may not have to wander too far to do so.  She is searching for work that will provide a sufficient livelihood, so that she can pursue what she loves. I say if you can do what you love, what you are passionate about, and get paid for it, you are truly living.  Her days are fairly ordinary, but drenched with potential.  She anticipates and waits, with patience.  Not in a hurry.  Kira is being called by God to live a life devoted to service.  She will see and hear and do extraordinary things, because God does extraordinary things in and through the ordinary lives of people like Kira. God is beginning a work in her life that God will be faithful to complete, over time, in subtle and not so subtle ways. She is both ready and completely unprepared and that is thrilling ad scary and the way things are when you're 22 and fresh out of college, without work, living at home.
Ordinary time.  With family, at the beach, in the mall, in the clunker on the road, on the couch or the computer.  God breaks in and seizes us with a hopeful vision of life eternal.  Inspired, we wake up and drink coffee and do what the day calls us to do.  Everyday, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the sacred and the mundane, collide.  Look around you.  Pretty ordinary, right? That is precisely where God is miraculously at work, making all things new.