This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s Chris Evans Show:
What day is it today? Wednesday? Just ‘Wednesday’? It can’t be – I thought every day now has to have a tag: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Buy-more-stuff Saturday, and so on. So, surely, today can’t be just ‘Wednesday’, can it?
Well, I just had a quick look online to see if today is significant for any other reason in history, and this is what I found: in 1775 Sir James Jay invented invisible ink. (Not that anyone noticed as they couldn’t read the press release …)
See what I mean? Not a great day – ever – in history. The sooner we get through to St Andrew’s Day tomorrow, at least the Scots will be happy.
Or have I got this wrong? I think we try to bring order and significance to dates, looking for patterns and sequences, but the truth is that one day follows the next and most days are very similar to the days that have gone before them. In other words, most days are ordinary – the everyday is what matters, not the rare dramatic excitements.
I once published a book of scripts and called it ‘Speedbumps and Potholes: Looking for Signs of God in the Everyday’. I bent the title from an Asian thinker called Kosuke Koyama who wrote a book called ‘Water Buffalo Theology’ in which he says that westerners do their theology (that is, thinking about God, the world and us) sitting in a university library reading dead German theologians … whereas in the East they start by looking at the world around them … and everywhere you look there are water buffalo.
Well, I was living in Streatham in South London. There were no water buffalo to be seen anywhere; but, life was shaped by dodging speedbumps and potholes in the roads where we lived.
The point is simple. Most days are routine – sometimes boring – but I reckon the knack is to take the everyday as a gift and look for signs of God in the ordinary … for example, where there is healing, or where people hear for the first time that they are loved and infinitely valuable, where injustice is confronted and truth told.
Today might turn out to be wholly unremarkable – just like any other day. Yet, it can be shot through with light and hope and grace and generosity. It’s our choice.
Happy Nothing Wednesday!
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