The Work You've Given Us
https://www.ctkbirmingham.org/ordinary-art-2025
An Ordinary Time Arts Gallery & Event
Saturday, June 14th, 2025 || 6:30 pm
FREE - Open to All
And now, Father, send us out
to do the work you have given us to do,
to love and serve you as faithful witnesses
of Christ our Lord. —from the Post Communion Prayer
After the thrilling rush of Holy Week, Eastertide, Ascension, and Pentecost, the church settles into the long, slow season marked by the ordinal numbers.
The first Sunday after Pentecost, the twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost.We call it ordinary time.
And after dwelling well and dwelling long on the mighty works of God in Christ Jesus—from his Advent and birth through his Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and sending of the Spirit—we're sent to simmer in the ordinary realities of the workaday life.
The usual. The typical. The routine.
Is God still mightily present? Is God still at work? Even in this ordinary day? This humdrum season of daily labors?
Yes and amen.
We're invited to remember for a whole lengthy season that God is entirely present down in the details of our lives. Even and especially in the ordinary work we're given to do.
The day job. The house chores. The projects; the tasks. The tending; the mending. The slow. The difficult. The boring.
These, too, are invitations to look and see how God is always silently at work, in us and through us, bringing about His good purposes in His good time.
Every Sunday we gather to remember and celebrate the mighty acts of God on our behalf. And just as reliably, at the end of every service, God sends us out into the world to do the works he's given us to do.
The scrubbing. The carving. The brushing. The digging. The typing. The serving. The sculpting. The preparing. The playing. The writing. The lifting. The blessing.
God puts good work to our hands, and tells us that he's prepared these works beforehand. God uses the hands of the people as His own, working His works in the world.
