Our ordinariness offers us kinship with our Savior and reveals the extraordinary love of God.

I am average. I promise I’m not being self-deprecating. As my teens would say, it is what it is. I am average height. I’m not a tiny person nor a tall person. I’m average weight. I even wear a size, wait for it, medium. I have medium brown hair, not dark brown, not light brown, just medium. I’m average looking. I’ve quite often been traveling, and a random person will tell me I look “just like” one of their friends. Yep, because I look like every other middle-aged soccer mom. My name is even average; given to every other girl born between 1970 and 1975.  I used to get frustrated at my ordinariness. Every person wants to have one thing that makes them special, makes them a superstar in some way. I am no different. Yet as I pondered my ordinariness, I kept coming back to Isaiah 53:2:

“For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.”

When Jesus walked the earth, there was nothing about his appearance that would draw someone to him. He wasn’t tall and handsome like Saul, or even “ruddy and had beautiful eyes, and handsome” like David. His name was even average. The name of every other Jewish boy born in his day. At the end of the day when moms called their kids home for dinner I’m sure the shout of “Jesus! Dinner!” had twenty boys turning their heads. If you lived in the time of Jesus and passed him on the street, you probably wouldn’t have noticed him. Maybe that’s why in Matthew 13, the folks that watched Jesus grow up in Nazareth asked, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things? And they took offense at him.” (13:54-57). In other words, how could this ordinary young man with no apparent special gifts or abilities or appearance to speak of, be doing these extraordinary things?

They didn’t understand that what made Jesus extraordinary was not his appearance or his earthly name or his earthly heritage or even his occupation as a carpenter’s apprentice. All those outward things that we too often put a premium on in our culture—appearance, family, popularity, power, position, achievement–He wasn’t extraordinary because of any of those markers. What made Him extraordinary was who He was—Son of God and Son of Man. That makes His coming to earth even more incredible. He condescended to us—became human. He didn’t enter humanity as the supernatural King of Kings. He came as an average Joe, a regular guy. A man who could identify with His creation deeply and profoundly. He experienced life, not as the King He was, but as an ordinary man. So He could fulfill these words, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)

Jesus came and lived an ordinary life, was an ordinary man, and it was in His ordinariness that He could become the perfect sacrifice, could fulfill the extraordinary purpose of becoming the Savior of the world. The only One who could defeat sin and death and establish an eternal kingdom. Because of Jesus, this ordinary girl has access to an extraordinary God. This God who makes all things new. This God who wants us to come in our weakness and our ordinariness so that we can point others to an extraordinary God. A God who loves us right where we are and just as we are, yet doesn’t leave us as we are. A God who delights in His creation, all of us, those the world perceives as ordinary and those the world perceives as especially gifted or talented or beautiful.

And it is in Christ, that I have a new identity as a daughter of the King, an extraordinary position for this ordinary girl. I didn’t have to earn that position. I didn’t have to look a certain way, or make a certain grade, or perform a certain task, or have a certain ability or achievement. Claiming this new identity simply required my humility to understand I am a broken and needy sinner and I need a Savior, and to receive the gift God offers through Jesus Christ.

I am ordinary. But I serve an extraordinary God. So I will embrace my ordinariness, and allow the extraordinariness of God to define my life. Because when I recognize who I am, the reality that the God of the universe loves me so much He became ordinary for a time so He could rescue me and make me new, is even more mind-blowing. I am nothing special, but my God sees me as someone worthy of His very life. He loved this average girl so much that He came and died for her. And that makes my God extraordinary. And when you are enveloped in His love, and He calls you His daughter, you become an extraordinary reflection of His love.

When I Call on Jesus – Nicole C. Mullen