Let’s face it—deep down we are all basically a bunch of thirteen-year-olds with heavy eyeliner, pumping our fists in the air and screaming along with Avril Lavigne that we’d “rather be anything but ordinary, please”. An explicit desire for uniqueness boils deep within us and longs for distinctive greatness and specific purpose.
Along with this daily desire to be great, there will always be the inevitable reminders of our own conventionality. A reminder of my own Average-Joeness sprang about just the other week. I was at a birthday party for a friend who was eating cake for the twenty-sixth time on her red “You are Special Today” plate. You know which one I’m talking about—probably because you all own it, too. Well, up until about a year ago, I was under the impression that this red plate was uniquely a Harkson family tradition. My mom would bring it out every year for my birthday, and while eating away the lasts crumbs of yellow cake I would sigh securely as the phrase “You are Special Today” embedded deep into my soul, boosting my sense of self-worth and value. Somewhere around my twenty-second birthday, I was appalled to hear a friend cry out, “Hey, we use that plate, too!”, followed by echoes of practically everyone else in the room claiming that they also have the red plate in their china cupboard. I have decided this red birthday plate should no longer read, “You are Special Today”, but rather, “You are Extremely Ordinary and Commonplace Today, After all, You Own This Plate”.
Another bursting of my individualism happened just yesterday when I read that my name, Abigail, jumped from ranking #6 in popularity in 2005 to #2 in popularity in 2007. Number two! At this rate, in 2008, my first name could likely be the number one name for every little female in diapers. A frightening thought. I’ve always liked my name, but I never dreamed it was so….ordinary.At the core of it all, ordinariness hurts a bit. I have heard multiple sermons preached on “ordinary people doing extraordinary things for the Kingdom”, but to be brutally honest, my struggle doesn’t lie with feeling like I am so ordinary that I will never be used by God. Rather, I often find myself pridefully believing that I am something really special, even indispensable to the Kingdom of God. Self-focused thoughts like, “Wow, Lord, there is a big world out there that needs to be reached with your love—you better start sending me out!” or “I can’t leave the city I’m in now and the Bible study I’m leading, who will take over if I go?” The struggle for me lies not so much in believing that God can work through “plain-old me”, but allowing myself to be a humbled vessel in which the Holy Spirit works through me for the glory of God alone. The truth is, without the power of the Holy Spirit in us, we really aren’t that awesome—at all. But, with the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we are image bearers of Christ created to glorify God and continue the powerful movement that Jesus began when He came to earth.
As the weeks to Pentecost Sunday quickly approach, I have been mulling over the incredible accounts found in the book of Acts. Recently, I learned that the Greek word for Acts is praxeis, which translates to “the heroic acts of great men”. In First Century Greek culture, praxeis would have been used to describe men like Alexander the Great who conquered the world at a young age of eighteen. Praxeis is a loaded, powerful word; a word far from anything of the ordinary. But, as we know, the book of Acts was not so much about the “heroic acts of great men” as it was about the powerful, transforming, heroic acts of Jesus working through normal, obstinate, prideful, ordinary men and women. And the truth is, these ordinary men and women were only changed to do the extraordinary when the Holy Spirit came upon them. Men like Peter, prior to the Holy Spirit coming in Acts 2, was a complete coward. John was hot-tempered and prideful. Thomas, a skeptic. The list goes on. But after Acts 2, we see men and women that are used by God to turn the world upside-down and spark a global movement to continue the powerful work that Jesus began. Jesus said himself in John 14, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father…And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth”. Jesus told us that He needed to leave, so that another—the Holy Spirit—could come and do even greater things in and through us! Jesus went up to Heaven so that the Spirit of God would come down and dwell among us. God wants to use us amidst our selfishness and ordinariness if we would humble ourselves to be used by His Spirit for His glory. He is alive and well in us through His spirit and desires to transform us to continue the movement He began.
Luke, the author of Acts, opens the book by sharing, “ I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.” The key word is BEGAN. Luke recorded what Jesus began. Anything that is started is meant to be continued. We are, through the Holy Spirit, the chosen ones to continue the movement of Jesus. And to me, there is nothing ordinary sounding about that.
