Sacred in the Ordinary: Rediscovering the Divine in Everyday Life
Earthy Spirituality
One of the things I’ve always found beautiful about Christian spirituality is how earthy it is. It doesn’t shy away from the physical or the ordinary; in fact, it embraces them fully. This is not a spirituality that asks us to escape the world, but one that invites us deeper into it.
Take the word "sacrament." It can sound a little formal, maybe even antiquated, depending on your background. But at its heart is a profoundly important idea: that God’s grace isn’t limited to what we think or believe. Grace is something we experience. It's tactile, tangible, woven into the stuff of our everyday lives.
The Everyday Conduit of Grace
Sacrament reminds us that the sacred and the ordinary are not far apart. In fact, they often overlap more than we realize. Bread and wine, water and touch, community and friendship—these aren't just symbols, they are vessels. Vessels for grace.
So, where is God in your life? Not just in church, not only in prayer, and certainly not just in your head. God is in your meals, in your friendships, in your routines. Sacraments help us see that.
Grace in Experience
The core idea of sacrament is this: the grace of God is communicated not only in ideas, but also—maybe even primarily—through our human experiences. That means the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday things we interact with without a second thought can become conduits for divine grace.
This is deeply rooted in one of the central convictions of Christian faith: incarnation. God was present in Jesus. So, God can be present in bread and grape and water and laughter. The divine isn’t just an abstract concept. God is with us, around us, in ways we can touch and taste and hold—if we’re paying attention.
Resurrection and Reality
That’s why resurrection matters so much. Easter isn’t just a theological idea; it’s a statement about what kind of world we live in. One where faith is lived, not just thought. One where hope has substance. One where God shows up in bodies and meals and gardens.
Faith doesn’t have to float above reality. It can be grounded in it. Because God loves this world. Loves your neighbor. Loves your body. Loves the food that nourishes it and the earth it comes from. Loves all the small, sacred acts that make up our days.
A Strange New World
And if all that is true—if incarnation means the divine and the human can meet right here, right now—then maybe sacraments aren’t just rituals. Maybe they’re invitations.
To see your world differently. To recognize grace in your routine. To find God in the very places you had stopped looking.
What would it look like to live as if that were true?
Maybe you’d find yourself in a completely new, almost foreign, strange new world—even though you never left home.
