British philosopher Alain de Botton bemoans the fact that “an ordinary life is no longer good enough.” Even those of us who retire to our beds each night with full stomachs, a hot bath, and a warm house feel as though our lives are pitiful and lacking in meaning.

Everywhere we look, we see people displaying their exotic vacations, flashy cars, and exciting friends, and we assume they are more fulfilled, perhaps even more worthy of esteem, than we are.

Not only are we tempted to consider ourselves unimportant, but it seems we risk considering ourselves disposable and without value.

We have become so preoccupied with staging fulfillment and contentment on our Instagram feeds and through our children’s meticulously themed birthday parties that we have neglected our relationships – the very stuff of fulfillment – to the point of crisis.

According to a 2016 Nielson report, the average American spends about 10 hours and 39 minutes each day consuming media. That’s roughly 65 per cent of their waking hours.

For many of us a solid chunk of that time is entertainment (social media, podcasts, Netflix). Basically, any moment we aren’t feeding ourselves, showering, or working our day jobs, we are consuming images that confirm how short we fall from the interesting and adventurous.

It is not OK for us to appear boring or uninteresting. We cannot appear poor or without talent. That would lead to our being unchosen or undesirable.

Thankfully, we were made for relationship and not for showcase.

When our main goal is to appear more “polished” than we are, we forget the very thing necessary to building satisfying relationships: vulnerability.

How do we arm ourselves against the mentality that we are the sum of our education, possessions, and image?

How do we confront this culture that claims to have everything we will never have?

We must stake out the one thing the culture can’t seem to nail down: peace. Peace in our heart and peace in our families.

But we need to be prepared for an arduous battle. You will encounter opposition in your quest for freedom from the world: “Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings … he professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the Lord. To us, he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us.” (Wis 2: 12-14)

To confront the world and remain standing in your faith, take these as your weapons:

  • A consistent, daily prayer habit;
  • Regular fasting;
  • The insistence on becoming a friend of silence;
  • Being unapologetically sincere with yourself and others.

Slowly, as silence fills your days, even despite your surroundings, you will notice that the peace of Christ will descend, bringing with it simple joy and delight in mundane, everyday pleasures.

The ability to find true joy in the present moment is the specialty of children. It is no coincidence that when Jesus found the disciples arguing about who was the greatest, he took a little child and placed him in their midst. “If you want to be the greatest, you need to become the servant of all,” he said. “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Being the servant of all doesn’t usually translate to a glamorous Instagram feed, but regular, shared family meals, game nights, morning and bedtime prayers, homemade cards for grieving friends, baptismal feasts and name days … this is the ordinary way to greatness.

Allow your home to become a place where there is no contradiction between living an ordinary life and simultaneously a great one – ordinary because it will seem initially unremarkable to the beholder, but great because the beholder doesn’t have the capacity to digest the richness.

Catherine Doherty, the foundress of Madonna House, wrote, “What can the world give me when I have Christ? I can give something to the world: I can give it God!”

Christians who have learned the value of ordinariness are streams in the desert. People who encounter them immediately feel at ease and less burdened. These Christians open up space for true healing and for true encounter with God.

May you know what it is to be an ordinary Christian, unencumbered by the trappings of the world but holding within you the treasury of blessing that was bestowed upon you at baptism.