In one of his books, preacher, Bill Hybels, relays how he once asked his congregation in Chicago, “How many of you this week have been thinking about Calvin’s doctrine of predestination? No hands went up. Then he said, “How many of you this week have had any sexual thoughts?” His question was greeted with a sea of hands. Hybels was not pleading for lots of sermons on sex but he was encouraging preachers and teachers to be relating the Bible and faith to issues that people are facing everyday.

Walker Percy underscores the value of putting the everyday under the microscope when in one of his novels he describes a character as someone who “got all A’s [in his studies] but flunked ordinary living.” Perhaps part of the responsibility should be borne by teachers. Kiekegaard once said, “That Hegel explained everything in life except how to get through an ordinary day.”

There is a great hunger for reflection on issues from everyday life. While so much of the news is made up of the sensational, the exotic and the extraordinary a new journal has been launched with the title, the Journal of Mundane Behavior (they also have a web site http://www.mundane behavior.org). This group of sociologists has turned from “the extreme, outlandish and ‘profane’ aspects of 20th century existence” to reflect on the everyday aspects of life that typically go unnoticed by us believing that “all around us are ordinary phenomena that can astound us if only we attend to them with the seriousness they do not typically receive.”

Part of the reason why Robert Fulghum has sold fifteen million copies of his books in 93 countries is not because he is a brilliant writer (his own confession) but because he is an observer of the ordinary. His best seller, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” has the instructive sub-title “Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things.” Michael Leunig’s cartoons adorn many people’s refrigerators, not because he tries to be relevant but because he is an observer of the ordinary.

Annie Dillard is another writer who helps us to see “the splendour of the ordinary.” In her twenties she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her book, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” Philip Yancey reflected on the impact this book had on him when saying, “As I read her accounts of nature, more exciting than an adventure novel, it struck me that everything she was describing took place beside a muddy creek in a nondescript field in Virginia.”

A big part of the popularity of the writer and preacher, F.W. Boreham can be attributed to the fresh way he spoke about the ordinary, commonplace and everyday. This motivation led him to preach on such things as drinking tea, letter writing and wet paint. He wrote about a philosophy of leisure, a theology of sleep and the benefits of travel. He adopted this method because his models like Charles Dickens had captivated his attention by writing about people and objects that he had seen around the streets of London. He used this method because he believed that Jesus commended the story telling style not only to grab people’s attention but because ordinary things provided a rich vein of truth for those who had the eyes to see.

To those exploring this winsome style of communication, Dillard said, “It’s all a matter of keeping [your] eyes open.” F.W. Boreham had similar advice: “You never see a thing by looking at it; you only see a thing by looking through it.” Glancing towards the birds of the air Jesus one day said, “Look!” Directing their gaze to flowers in the field he simply said, “See!”

Rev. Dr. Geoff Pound

Principal

Whitley (Baptist) College, Melbourne Australia

Reproduced with Geoff’s permission.