Simple Gifts

There are some things (in life, in the world, etc) that just get overlooked. They are overlooked because they seem to weak or too small or too insignificant to warrant much attention or recognition. Often times, those things that are overlooked are the ordinary elements of life--ordinary people, ordinary tasks, ordinary "things". Yet it is precisely within the ordinary that we encounter the Holy. God does not always come to us in the grand and magnificent, in the powerful and mighty. Case in point...the very life of God incarnate, Jesus. Jesus was, by all accounts, an unassuming person in an insignificant part of the world. His life passed largely overlooked by a great many, and many who did know about him saw him as a joke. Just as Jesus was an ordinary person, he used the example of ordinary elements of life to exemplify the Kingdom of God. As we read the parables of Jesus, we are called to see the sacred in life, less we miss the sacredness of life. One of the many gifts of God is the ability to witness God's realm in the ordinary times and place of life.