(Un)remarkable

I have found myself these days walking the same route for my exercise and photography. Over time it becomes more challenging to see things to photograph that I haven’t already photographed before. After a while, it becomes difficult to see something new, something that catches my eye.

The challenge for me is to see the same things with fresh eyes or to notice details that have gone unnoticed before, to see the remarkable in the unremarkable. I find myself going more slowly and noticing more details in my environment and experiencing a sense of wonder in everyday life, and not just in my photography.

This experience reminds me that our usual experience of God is in the details of our ordinary life. To have extraordinary, earth-shaking manifestations of God’s presence, as happened to the disciples at Pentecost, is not something we usually see happen. Christ redeems us in our ordinary life, and the ordinary becomes sacred.

Jesus met people where they were–at a meal, at the Temple or synagogue, mourning a death, celebrating a marriage, visiting a sick person, sitting on a hillside. The ordinary events of one’s life became an opportunity to encounter Jesus, who is present to us in the details of our own unremarkable life. Let us give thanks!

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19)