06/02/2026
Welcome to "Ordinary Time."
Ordinary time is the season in the traditional Church Calendar that follows after Pentecost and Trinity Sundays. It's the "Long Stretch" between Pentecost and the start of Advent.
But do not let the name fool you. “Ordinary” does not mean boring, unimportant, or spiritually dull. The word comes from “ordinal,” meaning numbered or ordered. Ordinary Time is the ordered season of the Christian year in which the Church walks week by week in the life, teaching, miracles, parables, commands, promises, and mission of Jesus Christ.
During the great festival seasons (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity) we rehearse the mighty works of God in the coming of Christ, His death, resurrection, and ascension, the sending of the Spirit, and the glory of the Triune God. But now, in Ordinary Time, we ask: How then shall we live?
This is the long green season of growth. The color green has often been associated with life, fruitfulness, and maturity. And that is what this season invites us to consider. Christ has come. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ has poured out His Spirit. Christ reigns at the Father’s right hand. Therefore, His people are called to grow up into Him in all things.
Ordinary Time reminds us that most of the Christian life is not lived on the mountaintop or in the whirlwind, but in the faithful, steady, Spirit-filled ordinary: ordinary Sundays, ordinary prayers, ordinary meals, ordinary repentance, ordinary obedience, ordinary fellowship, ordinary acts of love, ordinary households, ordinary work, ordinary worship.
But in the hands of the risen Christ, none of that is merely ordinary.
The Lord loves to do extraordinary things through ordinary means. He grows His people by Word and sacrament, by prayer and song, by fathers and mothers teaching children, by saints encouraging one another, by quiet repentance, by hidden faithfulness, by the weekly gathering of the Church, and by the steady preaching of the Gospel.
So as we enter Ordinary Time, we are not entering “boring time.” We are entering growing time. We are entering the season of discipleship, maturity, fruitfulness, and faithful endurance. The question before us is not whether Christ has done great things. He has. The question is whether we will now walk in them.
“Ordinary Time” is the time for ordinary Christians to follow an extraordinary Savior in the ordinary places where He has called us to be faithful.
This Sunday, one of our hymns will be "And Can It Be That I Should Gain" (TPH 431) which is a rousing song of rejoicing that revolves around awe at the gifts of God. We are asking in song "Can it be? Can it really be that Christ has done all of this...for me?" The answer is a resounding, unavoidable YES and Amen.
Don't forget about SING YOUR PART, which enables you to "train up" for Sunday and learn how to sing your part to many of the songs we sing together on the Lord's Day.
