At the movies they had several pre-movie commercials all with the same message: be different! It was amazing really, three commercials all for different products, all with the same message: we will help you stand out. The ordinary was denigrated and insulted, and if you don't stand out you are nothing.
This is the message of our time: be different, stand out, go your own way. But the gospel message is different. In Jesus God elevated the ordinary and the everyday, it divinized "that which does not stand out". As Peter Berger says, if Jesus was killed today, his death would not even warrant a mention on the ticker on CNN.
Today ever clamors to be the one everyone notices, to be the most effective at showing how different they are, to be the best at being different. But real greatness is not found in the halls of distinction. The movie I went to see, THE HOBBIT centers on this message. When Gandalf talks of the importance of his friend Bilbo Baggins who seems by all accounts nothing very special, he gives a wonderful reflection on all this. The most important fight in the universe, that between Good and Evil, really is fought in the everyday struggle to just do the right thing. In Gods kingdom, the president doesn't matter that much, but the auto repair guy who day-in, day-out goes to work, feed his family and run his business in a responsible way, is of supreme import.
And an additional irony is this: in this world today, it is the embrace of the ordinary that really stands out. In a world of people striving to be different, the person who doesn't care to be different is the one that really is out of the ordinary.
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