The Englewood Review of Books
Best Books of 2018
Advent Calendar
December 1
The Englewood Review of Books
The Ministry of Ordinary Places:
Waking Up to God’s Goodness
Around You
Shannan Martin
The Ministry of Ordinary Places:Paperback: Thomas Nelson, 2018
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One of things that I’m struck by often in my life is that the work of God is tremendously slow on our timeline. I had this moment when we had all this change and a ton of transition in my family’s life. But at some point that buzz wore off, the excitement factor dulled down and at that point I was left with the question, now what? What I really needed to do more than anything was just to learn to love my place, and not in the excitement of being new, but learn to love it in the ordinary. Essential to loving something in the ordinary is just committing to it. People around us come and go for a lot of different reasons. And we just started to realize that we are not meant to have control of their lives. What we can do is to just be here. We can keep committing to this slow and ordinary work of God, to be that constant and steady presence, in a world that doesn’t feel very steady. That matters. We don’t see Jesus finding a new group of friends to hang around with. We don’t see him bouncing to a different small group because some of the people are kind of annoying in the old small group. We see him in the long haul, in the daily life with them.
- from our conversation with Shannan Martin (and Ashley Hales)
in our Advent 2018 magazine issue
( SUSBSCRIBE NOW to the magazine)
Listen to Shannan Martin on Jen Hatmaker’s podcast:
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