Extra Ordinary in the Ordinary

They were ordinary purple flowers that were growing in our yard; nothing special about them. They had surrounded a bird feeder that had not used for the past two years. The plan was to remove them and the bricks surrounding them and replace the small flower garden with sod. I was waiting for the right combination of free time and cooler weather.

And yet, today as I watered the gardens and my lawn I noticed something extra ordinary among these ordinary flowers. On the purple flowers was the most beautiful yellow monarch that I have seen. Two days before I had seen two orange monarchs on these flowers; the first monarchs we had seen all summer! Extra ordinary in the ordinary; I was glad that I hadn’t gotten around to removing the flowers yet.

They were ordinary orange colored flowers that were growing in our yard; nothing special about them. A young neighbor child had given them to us as seeds to plant in one of our many flower gardens. We planted them mostly to please him because he liked to come into our yard and look at all of our vegetable and flower gardens. He also was my stand-in to pick the daily bucket of raspberries from our garden when I was out of town this summer. His role was simply to eat them so that they wouldn’t go to waste; a role he seemed very happy to do.

Today, on the orange colored flowers, I noticed a hummingbird lingering in no apparent hurry as it went from flower to flower. This was the second day in a row that I had seen it. Yesterday it stayed for about two minutes as I stood and watched it with my granddaughter. Extra ordinary in the ordinary; I was glad that we had planted those simple orange flower seeds from the young child.

Ordinary humming birds and butterflies can be extra ordinary when you don’t see them very often and they come as a surprise when you don’t expect them. My guess is that they have been around for awhile, but I hadn’t seen them before. I pondered; “what else have I been missing that lives in our yard?’

Jeremiah 33:3 came to my mind which says; “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” (NKJV)

What does ‘great and mighty things’ mean? Could it be that the God who created this great and wonderful planet wants to show us extra ordinary things in our ordinary lives? Could it be that we are so used to going through our (sometimes) mundane days that we never even ponder if there could be more than what we see? Is it possible that there really is something more than this?

You, we, I will never know unless we call out to Him and expect that He will show us extra ordinary in the ordinary that we call life.