Dear Redeemer Family,
Author GK Chesterton once served as a juror in his small town. That experience inspired him to write an essay called “Twelve Men,” in which he marvels at the significant role that average men are called to play in our society:
“Our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
Here in the month of August, I can feel the pressure of the fall schedule closing in. With it comes a familiar feeling of being intimidated by the challenges of keeping up with it all — maybe more honestly worded, the challenge of performing well. In a culture that puts immense pressure on us and our children to be extraordinary, the greater challenge might be to instead resist that impulse. In this aptly named season of Ordinary Time, the longest and most uneventful portion of the Christian calendar, we find the invitation to lean into our limitations and subsequently the grace it takes to sustain us in our work.
“Lean into your limitations” is not going to make the inspirational quotes posters on any office walls, but it is part of the paradox of Christian living. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul writes, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” If our main goal is to be and to raise ordinary men and women who have the perfect strength of Christ in them, the challenge, then, is to have courage to trust that our lives have value solely because of who our God is, not by anything we become or produce.
Jesus elevated the ordinary people around him and entrusted them with the most important work to be done on earth. It is the fact that the disciples were chosen and equipped by God that made them qualified for the work he prepared for them, not any amount of special training or innate skill they possessed. In fact, their ordinariness was an important qualifier for their work. So in this season of the academic year, in this season of the liturgical year, let’s allow ourselves and our children to be ordinary followers of Christ who lead with their weakness and, in his perfect strength, accomplish the work he has laid before us. After all, to Chesterton’s point, when there is serious work to be done, we need ordinary people.
In Christ,
Casey Cisco
Director of Redeemer Kids
