Five Minute Friday - Together

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TOGETHER

Funny that this word comes up now.  Recently our work group has been huddling over what it means to be a team; to work as a team; to be a member of a team.

Image Courtesy of adamr/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the end of it all it means togetherness.  Cliché, I know, but there's no "I" in team.  Period.

We weren't designed to be alone, to do it all on our own.  God's Word, in the very picture of the Church, is togetherness.  Starting with our togetherness in God through Christ and the Holy Spirit.  A togetherness that is oneness.  That oneness fuels our purpose and enables us to practice this togetherness.

This togetherness is based in service.  We work together and serve one another.  In our togetherness no one alone gives.  We give and receive; give and take; back and forth; again and again.  Together we can.  Alone, well, is lonely. 

Aloneness has its time and place but we are rarely called to give aloneness a right to be front and center.  In our separation, times of quiet and seeming aloneness we are able to renew our spirits through all that is whispered to it by the Spirit.  Empty for refilling, we are ready again for togetherness.

Agreed, we sometimes leave our time of quiet aloneness kicking and screaming, not feeling ready or equipped to face togetherness, but grace upon grace, perpetual grace, gently whispers, "Go.  Yes, you can.  Trust Me."

Ready, set, go.  Not just for Five Minute Friday but for the busyness of the day; for purpose; for togetherness.

Your Turn:  How do you benefit from togetherness?

5 Minute Friday - Laundry

Photo Credit:  Microsoft Office 2010

Is it just me or is there not something comforting about the routine of laundry?  Like most household chores it must be repeated again and again, but there's always something refreshing and renewing that comes from doing laundry that I don't really get from something like sweeping or toilet bowl cleaning; know what I mean?

 

I guess one of the things is that it engages my senses more than other chores.  While the dirty laundry is not the favorite fragrance of the routine, it is, nonetheless, a familiar one.  You recognize your loved ones in the piles, don't you?  Then, the clean laundry!  Oh, how I love the smell of clean laundry!

Another thing I love about laundry is the sound of it.  My favorite day is a spring or fall day, windows raised, no television or other noise, and the sound of the washer and dryer humming their special life rhythm.  The dryer's fragrance floats back through windows raised and it's just a perfect day.  

No, sweeping and toilet cleaning just don't treat the senses the way laundry does.  Laundry, I suppose, is the rhythm and fragrance of life.

Your Turn:  How do you feel about laundry?

5 Minute Friday - Ordinary

Taking the 5 Minute Friday writing challenge to ease myself back into (hopefully) blogging.

Today's prompt:  Ordinary

 

 ordinary, plain, nondescript, dull, lacking - the opposite of extraordinary

 

Life is usually lived out in between the two, tides of ordinary punctuated with extraordinary.  Ordinary brings thoughts of smallness, of little merit or contribution, but because we live the majority of our life in it, it is vital.  It is fabric, right?  We have threads of extraordinary but there'd be nothing to weave them through without the ordinary.  You can't even say extraordinary without ordinary.  Connected.  There.

Jesus came in the form of the ordinary, the daily, the human.  That's us.  Ordinary encapsulated in Extraordinary, that's Jesus.

Put us together when we accept our inheritance and you have the beauty of our salvation.  Christ in us moves us into the realm of the extraordinary and gives us new eyes to see, at times, where the two intersect.

Oh, sweet ordinary.  You are not dull, indeed.