Currently, I’m teaching a series, Everyday, Ordinary. Our church is learning what it looks like to walk with God in our actual lived lives. We know that God is always at work in us and that His most formative work is often found in our everyday, ordinary experiences and responsibilities. This post is in response to this past Sunday’s message.

I encourage you to use your one word as a lens as you enter into this Midweek Connection.

It’s Wednesday.

The middle we spoke about when we gathered on Sunday. I invited us then to see Wednesdays as a point of Midweek Connection, a time set aside to reflect on our week so far and to intentionally pursue God’s presence.

Here is the exercise for our Midweek Connection:

I use this exercise to help me connect or reconnect with what is happening in and around me.

AWARENESS & ALIGNMENT

These simple ideas remind me to pay attention and commit to some action. I need to stop and notice what I see… what I am aware of. Sometimes this is a new idea or a reminder of something I already know.

But I also have to consider what I will do about what I know, or more telling, what I am willing to do about what I notice.

Here are the two questions I asked you to consider— that corresponds to AWARENESS & ALIGNMENT.

AWARENESS: What do you now know?

Over the last two weeks, we have been learning what it means to be faithful amid our mundane responsibilities, in our most ordinary of days, understanding that God’s work in and through us happens where we are now, in the actual lives we are living. We want to be faithful in the small moments, not as means to prove ourselves into bigger, better blessings (that’s now how God works anyway), but to be faithful simply for the sake of being faithful.

ALIGNMENT: What are you willing to do about it?

Our lives consist of all that we experience— the moments that are hard and the days that are long. We experience the exhilaration of delight and the depth of joy. There is pain and grief and there are times that are just quite dull.

Our lives require us to create and make things happen, but they also require us to maintain what is already happening. We have to do all sorts of things for the upkeep of our actual lives, often menial tasks that comprise a large chunk of time.

These are the places where we can often find resentment and futility, thinking that somehow if we were better at life, we would not be stuck doing this or that.
But it is precisely these moments—the moments in between the thrill of a new start and the relief of a task accomplished— that we most need God’s grace to remind us of His purpose and His intention.

These middle moments are the places where it is easiest to wish them away rather than see them as opportunities to be faithful, perhaps even the most important places for us to be faithful and to experience God’s faithfulness.

I want us to pay attention and to hold out hope that God longs to meet us in the middle spaces to see Him, to sense His presence and to heed His invitation to keep in step with Him.

Below is the prayer I shared on Sunday, anticipating today. I invite you now to read it again, letting the words and intent usher you into your midweek. This day is an opportunity to reflect on where you’ve been, where you are going, purposefully surrendering both to God, asking Him to draw near.

Lord, it’s Wednesday.
Often the point where I feel like I have more to do than can get done.
The place where I have given up on doing anything more than just getting through.
It is the hump I need to get over in order to be able to do it all over again,
Halfway to this week being over.
But I don’t want this week to simply be over.
I want it to matter.
I want it to count.
Could you show up in this middle? Could you show me that you have shown up?
Would you offer peace or strength or both?
Would you bring hope,
Perhaps with a little courage or correction,
Guidance or affirmation?
Let me know your presence,
To feel your connection as you come near …
and come with…
Even on a Wednesday.