by Canon Rob Penrith

In preparing these newsletters, the place to start for me is the Lectionary, the little book that gives us the readings, the themes, the commemorations and the high Sundays of the year. This generally gives me a good starting point for my preparation. So, that is what I did for today’s newsletter. I opened to the 25th October – and there it was, “The Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost, The Thirtieth Sunday of the year”. In other words ….. nothing special about this Sunday. Not very helpful you might think, but, in fact, it really got me going…!

There is a holiness that belongs not only to cathedrals and sacred gatherings, feast days and high Sunday’s – but to the very ordinary – to kitchens, hospital corridors, traffic delays, unanswered emails, restless nights, and ordinary Sundays after Pentecost. We hold firm to the belief that God’s sacred and anointed presence never ever leaves us. He is there in the highs and the lows and the very ordinary times in between.

here is also a holiness that belongs to one during pain, sorrow and angst. We are often tempted to divide life into “spiritual moments” and everything else, as though God only visits the dramatic places. Yet the Incarnation itself tells another story.

For thirty hidden years in Nazareth, Jesus lived an ordinary life — walking dusty roads, learning a trade, eating meals, attending synagogue, sharing family life. Scripture passes over most of those years in silence. And yet the silence itself is holy. God was not waiting for life to become spectacular before entering it fully.

Perhaps we misunderstand what spiritual maturity looks like. We imagine brightness, certainty, visible victory. But often maturity looks like steadiness. Returning again to prayer. Speaking gently when tired. Doing the next right thing. Remaining faithful in grief. Offering kindness without recognition. The saints are rarely formed in moments of applause. More often, they are shaped in repetition.

The scam of modern life is not only busyness, but the subtle belief that significance must always feel exciting. We become restless with the ordinary. Yet the kingdom of God repeatedly arrives in smallness: birds frantically feeding on the grass just before a major storm hit Port Elizabeth this week, a silent moment of reflection and intercession alongside a dying parishioner, the shape of the surf churned up by the wind, the thank you message of a grandchild for a small favour. God seems strangely fond of little things. God was there in each of those moments for me – powerfully present. Praise the Lord!

In The Book of Ruth, redemption unfolds through harvesting grain, caring for family, and quiet acts of covenant loyalty. In The Gospel of Luke, Jesus says faithfulness in little things matters because little things are never truly little in the kingdom of God. Eternity often enters the world unnoticed.

St Benedict of Nursia understood deeply that holiness is usually formed in ordinary rhythms rather than dramatic experiences. His great gift to the Church was not a spirituality of escape from daily life, but a spirituality that discovered God within daily life itself. In his Rule of Saint Benedict, prayer, work, meals, silence, hospitality, rest, and community life all become places of encounter with God. One of Benedict’s most important insights was that stability matters. In a restless world, he taught monks to remain faithful to a particular community and way of life. Holiness was not found by endlessly chasing new experiences, but by staying present long enough for God to shape the heart through repetition, patience, and humility. The ordinary day itself became the workshop of the soul.

There are seasons when we cannot see spiritual progress at all. Prayer may feel thin. Worship may feel distant. Hope may flicker rather than burn. But roots grow in darkness. Much of God’s deepest work happens beneath the surface, beyond our ability to measure it. The farmer cannot pull on the shoots to make them grow faster. He trusts the hidden life within the soil.

Perhaps holiness is not first about intensity, but attentiveness — learning to recognise that God is already present in the ordinary day before us. The laundry, the phone call, the interruption, the meal prepared, the quiet act of forgiveness, the perseverance through pain: these may become altars if offered in love. (St Benedict reminds us that in the New Testament, the idea of altar shifts from that of the Old Testament. There are no longer repeated physical sacrifices because Christ is the final offering. Instead, the whole of life becomes an altar. Paul says in Romans 12:1 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and living sacrifice”)

And so today may not feel remarkable. But perhaps heaven measures differently than we do. Perhaps unseen faithfulness is one of the most beautiful offerings we can give to God.

Lord, let me not despise the smallness of today.
Teach me the holiness of ordinary days.
In the unnoticed places, make me faithful.
In the quiet places, make me attentive.
And in the ordinary rhythm of life,
let me walk steadily with You. Amen.

Listen to this hymn as you reflect back on this devotion:

Take my Life and let it be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of4l5bTdZ8M

May the Lord be in every little moment of your day today,
Rob

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