This Sunday we enter what is known in the church as "ordinary time." Ordinary time occurs twice in each year, and it represents the time of year that exists outside of the major seasons of the Christian year: Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.

The season of ordinary time between Christmas and Lent is usually pretty short, but this season, the one that starts Sunday and goes through Advent, is long.

But maybe that's a good metaphor for the Christian life. We exist for so long in ordinary time, and in ordinary TIMES in the world, that we forget that we're meant to be extra-ordinary.

Maybe that's not it, either. Maybe it's better to say that we're meant, as Christians, to help make the extra-ordinary, ordinary.