This week Christians across the world celebrated Pentecost.

Fifty days after Easter, we come to the last part of the story of Jesus’ life, which we started before Christmas. Pentecost is the point when the church grows up, the Holy Spirit comes down on the disciples in tongues of flame, and God says to them, and to us, “over to you.”

The rest of the year, in the church calendar, from June to November, is called ‘Ordinary Time.’ It doesn’t sound very exciting compared to the busy seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter, but I think it’s the most exciting and interesting of all, because Ordinary Time is when we get to respond to the story.

I love listening to the stories of what we do in our ‘ordinary time.’ It’s the time we’re not at work, not at school, not washing up or hoovering, when we choose what we want to do with time that is entirely ours.

How we choose to use our ‘ordinary time’ says more about who we are and what we care about than any other part of our day.

It’s where we get to play, to be inventive, charitable, generous, imaginative, active, or peaceful.

In church we have colours for all the seasons: white for Christmas and Easter, purple for Advent and Lent.

Ordinary Time is green—the colour of living and growing things—because it’s in the ordinary time that we grow.

Ordinary days are the days we get to become more ourselves, where we nurture the things that matter most to us, and do the things we most believe in.

They are also the days when we discover that we are part of a story that is wonderful, and because of that, each and every one of us is anything but ordinary