First, I’d just like to say THANK YOU for joining me on this “ordinary” journey. It’s such a privilege to be able to journey with folks through the calendar, this amazing and beautiful way of living the story of Jesus and living into the life of Jesus and the life of the church—the Gospel.

I’ve found the liturgical calendar to be extraordinarily life giving for me and my life with God. It’s why I have written these books and shared them with you as a resource and devotional help. I hope, I pray that this has been helpful, instructive and inspiring in your pursuit of Jesus and the Kingdom that is always and already near.

As I mentioned in the book, the season of Ordinary Time is only half way through. We’ve still got 13 more weeks! For me that is good news. I need all the time I can get to follow Jesus in my everyday, ordinary life.

I wanted to give a few resource here that might help you over this second half of Ordinary Time to stay on point while you make this journey. Then after these resources I’ll tell you a bit more about this project I am working on and how you can keep going!

Some Resources for Ordinary Time

(some of these you may have picked up on as you read the OT book)

* The Lectionary Page :: This is a really simple way to get the Sunday lectionary scripture reading and to follow the calendar of feasts and fasts and things like that. It’s simple but helpful.

The ESV Bible Webpage has a great little site and if you click on PLAN and then on DAILY OFFICE LECTIONARY it will take you to daily readings, all of which come from the Book of Common Prayer and church calendar.

Pray As You Go is a great resource, I use it regularly. A brief audio guided prayer to get your day started.

The Trinity Mission is a great resource for daily prayer. On the site you can follow along with morning, mid-day and evening prayers (as found in The Book of Common Prayer). You can even listen to an audio version or just read along. Again, this site follows the lectionary, the church calendar readings. You can click on their daily scripture readings and get easy access to the daily office scripture readings, also found in The Book of Common Prayer .

And here are a couple books I would recommend if you want to follow along that way.

Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God :: Bobby Gross

Journey into the Heart of God: Living the Liturgical Year :: Philip H. Pfatteicher

Following Jesus: Biblical Reflection on Discipleship  :: NT Wright
Mark for Everyone :: NT Wright 

To be honest, there are not a ton of devotional resources on Ordinary Time. Even some of the books above aren’t specifically on Ordinary Time or might not be exactly a devotional on this time of the year. Your best bet might be to grab some kind of book or devotional on discipleship or on Christian living. Anything that will take you deeper into one of the these themes of this time of the year.

Here are a few recommendations

* The Cost of Discipleship * The Divine Conspiracy * Simply Christian * One Life * The King Jesus Gospel * A Long Obedience in the Same Direction * Mere Discipleship

AS FOR THIS PROJECT

This project through the liturgical year is really meant to be a resource and a help to church communities, youth groups, families and individuals. It’s an introduction and devotional resource for folks, leading them into the beauty and depth of the Christian Year. 

So far I’ve written three books in this series; Advent, Lent and now Ordinary Time. These three books make up approximately half the calendared liturgical year. My hope would be that people grab these and journey along with their community and with their families. I also hope this wets your appetite for this sort of thing and that in a year of so you’re ready for the rest of it!

Over the next year I hope to be writing the remainder of the years daily devotionals and meditations. The hope would be to compile all the content of the three books already written and the new content I will be writing, creating one book to rule them all (or something like that). One book to lead you and your community through the entire year of the church calendar.

What I need / How you can help

I need your input, your feedback and your participation. The more feedback we get, the more sales of the existing books and the more demand we have for this entire projects completion the faster it will all get done and the more incentive my publisher will have to get it out there. ;-) 

I would love to hear from you!
email me: erik@erikwillits.com
email my publisher: The Youth Cartel

And do all the tweeting, facebooking, instagramming, yelping, woofing or whatever clever social media platforms you have to spread the word of the books and share your thoughts.

Amazon is also a really big deal! If you’ve read any of the books and want to leave your feedback on Amazon, that would be incredibly helpful!

Thanks friends! I look forward to continuing this journey with you and with Jesus, our risen and reigning Lord!

Grace and peace

Erik 


The experiment I want to encourage you to do today is to identify a living icon, someone who has pointed you or others to Jesus and meditate on their life. Think about how you might live a life that points to Jesus in similar ways. 

Maybe the person that comes to your mind when you think of a living icon is a historical figure, they could have lived 10 years ago or 1000 years ago. Maybe it’s a grandparent a pastor or a leader in your church or community, someone more contemporary. 

Whoever comes to you mind as you sit in prayer thinking about the question… 

“Who is a living icon I would want to exemplify and meditate on in my pursuit of Jesus?”

Whatever that might be, spend some time thinking and maybe even reading about their life. Notice how they point you to Jesus with their actions and with their devotion.  How they have pointed others to Jesus with their life and words and works. Notice the ways they are Christlike. Let all these things point you to Jesus, embracing Paul’s mantra of, “follow me as I follow Christ.”

Here are a few names that come to mind for me. 

Augustine of Hippo :: Today is his feast day so that’s why I think of him but he’s well worth looking at and is a historical church figure who has pointed MANY people to Jesus. 

“Let me know you, O Lord, who knows me: let me know you, as I am know.” 
~From The Confession of Saint Augustine

I also think of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. We’ve talked about him and looked at his life but he is  great example to me these days. Before he became a great spiritual leader he humbled himself, went back to school and learned the way of Jesu so he could lead others in the way of Jesus. He maybe the patron saint of late bloomers or something. I’m a fan! 

A few others

Saint Patrick
Saint Benedict 
John Wesley 
OR maybe John Calvin if you’re so inclined
Mother Teresa
Saint Francis 
Andrew White, The Bishop of Baghdad
Bishop Todd Hunter
CS Lewis

Just to list a few, I could go on! 

Here are a couple other things that might help or that you might find interesting. 

This is an interesting list I found of Notable Christian figures :: LINK 

A similar list of only American religious figure, some I’m really like some I don’t :: LINK

And here is al ink to a book I was given. FULL of great spiritual figures and little bits of a biography and of their post popular works. It’s really more like a daily devotional but it’s good stuff, I highly recommend it. Here’s the LINK

Find you own, snag one of these… spend some time meditating on a figure that points you to Jesus. And then spend some time praying about how you can do the same for others! 

Have you ever heard the saying, “you are what you eat”? I wonder if the same can be said for what we look at. You are what you ogle, or something like that. I’m not sure if that’s 100% true but there is no doubt that the things you watch and really fix your gaze on effect your inner life, your heart and soul.

John the Baptist caught a vision of what his life was to be all about, it is to be all about pointing to Jesus.

“This is he (John) who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: ‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”

Matthew 3:3 (Matthew 3 NIV / MSG) 

John existed to point point to Jesus and then to make the way straight so people could get to and be gotten by the one he was pointing to. This is the life we are all called to live to one degree or another. 

John was a living Icon, as so we are all called to be! 

This book 7 men is a great start of find a few fellows that are great examples of faith and living the life of Christ in our crazy world.

Here is a video with a little intro into these people.

I’ll post more later today but this little video is a great start.

7 Men with Eric Metaxas

Today I wanted to give you a little extra guidance on praying with icons. I know it may be a weird concept for some and a new concept for most but for me it’s been a helpful practice. 

Here are a couple articles that might be helpful as you learn to pray with icons. 

Praying with Icons by Fr.  Simon Ckuj

I cons in Anglicanism 

Praying with Icons by Jim Frost

I’m sure there are some other good resources out there. I could give you some books but these are a few short article on the web that may be helpful. Check out the book I cited in todays reading if you want some more on this topic. 

Here are a few more quotes for your inspiration

“No possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end.”
~ C.S. Lewis (Readings for Reflection and Meditation) 

“In the liturgical year we live the life of Jesus day after day until finally one day it becomes our own.”
~ J. Chittister  (p.97 - The Liturgical Year) 

Also from The Liturgical Year
“We become the message of it. We grow into the life of it. WE ourselves become players in the great drama of the bringing of the reign of God to the turmoil of the world. …”

If you do a google search for “cultural ions” you will find all kinds of things. 

Some of things I see…
* Gandhi * Martin Luther King Jr. * Muhammad Ali * Madonna * Different american logos / icons - McDonalds, Nike, Apple * Etc

Then google search “Icons of Jesus” 
You will see all kinds of beautiful, ancient icons. 
* Christ the pantocrator * Jesus’ transfiguration * Jesus and the Sacred Heart * Burial of Christ * Christ the Good Shepherd * Christ Crucified * Crucification Eucharist  

Tons of great icons you could check out this week! 

If you wish to buy any of them for devotional purposes I could suggest these 2 website… 

www.LegacyIcon.com
www.Skete.com 

There is a big historical conversation around this, just remember, you are not worship the image you are worshiping what the image points you to. It’s an ICON! 

To read more about this good History of icons and / or google Iconoclasm. You learn all kinds of interested historical conversation and debate, if you’re into that sort of thing. 

Idols aren’t real. (ponder that)

It’s true isn’t it. Those things that we make into idols, and we can make pretty much anything into an idol, aren’t real. They might be tangible but real, deserving of worship and trust and love… not even close. Paul says that normal things like bread and wine point us to the greater reality of Jesus and what he has done for us. This is why Jesus is the one, the only one worthy of worship.

So God is in all things. All things point to God. All things thrust us into divine participation (2 Peter 1:4). And all things are icons, tools inspired by God for God. They fail only as much as we fail to let them point to greater, divine realities.

The EXPERIMENT

Today you will need some play dough. 

The experiment I want to encourage you to do is to fashion yourself an idol. This is the think in your life—your heart & mind that tends to receive your worship, your attention, your adoration. It could be anything, your phone, your family, your job, your car, your band account… anything! With you play dough (and if you don’t play dough, draw a picture, write out what that thing might be.) 

Once you have fashioned your idol spend some time with it in front of you. Bring it before the Lord. Examine your heart and ask God why this thing draws so much of your attention. Maybe it’s a matter of confession and repentance, confessing to God, asking forgiveness and asking for the power to turn away from this idol and turn with and toward God in life abundant. 

Once you have spent this time with your idol before you and in prayer with God about this idol in your life, offer it to God and destroy it. I like the play dough because at this stage you can really destroy it. Take a hammer to it, crush it with your hand, rip it into pieces! If your drawn your idol or written in on a piece of paper destroy it how you see fit. 

This is a tangle way to offer your life as a living sacrifice to the Lord. To break free from your idol thought the power of the Spirit and find freedom and grace to let created things point you to the creator. 

This is a simple, prayerful little activity but may it be profound for you and your life with God. 

The sign of God’s leading and freedom is that they WILL be free and they WILL worship God. 

Check out Exodus 3 today, specifically verse 12.

Exodus 3:1-22

I’ve mentioned images and creation that point to the creator, here were a few more thoughts I had for this week but couldn’t fit into the book.

We all love looking at pictures, myself included. I love looking at pictures of my kids. Whenever I am out of town I spend an hour a night flipping through my phone looking at pictures and watching videos of my family. I find myself smiling, remembering, being thrust back into those moments that have been captured in time. Now, not one of the pictures or videos can come close to capturing my love for my kids, they aren’t capable of capturing the fullness of those moments but they sure can point in that direction.

So many of the pictures actually miss the moment completely.

We all have things in our lives that point beyond themselves. It’s that weird souvenir from your childhood vacation, the sea shells, restaurant menu or snow globe. I remember being a teenager and finding all of my childhood teeth in my mom’s sock drawer. Now I’m the one collecting my kids teeth. Why! Because all those things point to moments and people and places I want to be forever connected to.

I would encourage you today to think of a few of those things that points you to significant moments you have had with God, your creator and redeemer. Are there any icons, any created things you have that point you in significant ways to your creator. 

Take some time and ponder those things today!