Do you know what day of the week it is for me as I sit here with shafts of winter sunlight creating a ladder pattern across the hardwood floor? It’s a Simple Tuesday. An ordinary January day the week before the hubbub of the spring semester. Seven simple days before a fresh group of students will sit in front of me in courses such as nutrition and sport finance. It’s a mundane morning other than the activity next door as my neighbor has repairs made to her home. It’s a Simple Tuesday. And it’s this idea that Emily Freeman shares in her book that came to my attention while researching the topic of Ordinary Time.

In her book Simply Tuesday, Freeman offers us a chance to reconsider the current pace of life that culture is pressing upon us and suggests we might want to travel a different route—one that mirrors Jesus’ own Unhurried Life. “When it comes to paying attention to your real life, Tuesday seems to be the most logical place to look. Here is where you keep time, in this home with these people and this skin on.” So, while the sun traces shadows through my home office, I wonder how many of us allow a Simple Tuesday, like today, to pass without notice, without a second thought, marking days off the calendar until it turns over to Friday or some event on our schedule?

As a friend engages in preparations to bury her mother this week, I speculate that most of the memories that will be shared among friends and family will likely not be connected to a significant life moment, but to the Simple Tuesdays that collected over time. “Tuesday is the eat-at-home day, the go-to-bed-early day, the routines-are-all-in-order day. Perhaps the most ordinary of all the days, Tuesday lacks the excitement of the weekend or the productivity of, say, Monday. Tuesday is business as usual, continuing on with the week. Tuesday is on the way, but not there yet. It’s the just-getting-started day, the day we bring donuts to the office because it’s going to be a long week. We don’t schedule parties for Tuesday, but perhaps we’ll send out the invitations…The big stuff of life we save for the weekend. Tuesday holds the ordinary, the everyday, and the small.” But what if it’s during a Simple Tuesday that God is asking us to see the evidence of His kingdom?

One of the enjoyable aspects of Freeman’s perspective is that she is not asking us to “create meaning and elevate each moment to the level of The Most Important Thing Ever,” but to instead respect even tiny moments that can be “crucial to seeing, embracing, and learning from our whole life, not just the pretty parts. The small moments can offer hints of a greater reality just like the lovely ones do. But in these, it can be harder to find.”

Contemplating these ideas around a Simple Tuesday and making the most of what life offers, brings to mind the lyrics from a Martina McBride song from the mid-90s about a couple celebrating an anniversary. “I’ve never built your mansion on a hill/Or warmed you in the Spanish sun/I simply blink my eye/And think as years fly by/Of all the things we’ve never done.” Rather than focusing on moments missed, the words turn to marking those Simple Tuesdays of a life shared together. “We’ve never grown apart/You never broke my heart/With secrets that you’ve kept me from/We’ve never been untrue/And I’m still here with you/Through all the things we’ve never done.”

Why do we find it so hard to celebrate Ordinary Time as the lyrics above suggest? Freeman proposes, “Let’s stop running from ordinary time but begin to sit in the midst of it.” What if during that hour spent at lunch, eating Mexican cuisine with a friend, we made a conscious choice to savor the many years of friendship? Should I not be embracing the fact that when I return to the table from the restroom, a Diet Dr. Pepper is waiting for me? After years of lunches shared, the server can appear while I am away, and my friend knows how to order?

Asking us to reframe our approach to Simple Tuesdays, Freeman advocates for Taking It Slow, and as we slow our pace, to turn to Jesus, because he did not model this fast-paced life of comparison and competition. “Rather, embracing all of these [moments] is part of what makes a faithful [and flourishing] life. These regular tasks are the unlikely portals into the kingdom of God, and the goal isn’t to set them aside but to recognize Christ with us in the midst of them.”

Am I being challenged to approach this Simple Tuesday differently? The answer is undoubtedly yes! To relish the sunlight warming a cold winter day? Yes! To celebrate a new semester as I update the contents of my spring syllabi? Yes! To invest time in Scripture and invite God into my Simple Tuesday? Yes! I don’t want to miss these ordinary moments, because “if we miss them, we miss everything. We run right by the kingdom’s doors, and no matter where we go, we have missed the door that leads us home.”

Perhaps you are encouraged to live out your next Simple Tuesday in an awareness of the gifts that an ordinary day can hold. Please consider sharing in the comments below of a time when an everyday moment became something more.

References:

Bickhardt, C. & Penning, J.E. (1995). All The Things We’ve Never Done. [Recorded by Martina McBride]. On Wild Angels.

Freeman, E. P. (2015). Simply Tuesday: Small-moment living in a fast-moving world. [Kindle version]. Baker Publishing Group.