I first read Radical in my early twenties and it made me want to travel all over the world for the sake of the gospel. I did some of that, but when I read Ordinary, I was 27, working a normal 8-5 job in South OC and trying to figure out what following God looks like in this season of life.
Reading Ordinary was like a breath of fresh air and encouraged me to want to be as present as possible with the people who are right in front of me and serve faithfully at my local church down the street. Yes, it’s ordinary, but it’s far from mundane.
Paul and the disciples had extraordinary callings so that we could have ordinary ones and be like Mother Teresa, who “learned to help the person she was with at the moment.”
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” -George Eliot