The Gift Hidden in the Ordinary
Some may call it banality, others egotism, but we live in an age where anyone can publish their life and thoughts in real time. Blogs, vlogs, reels, and stories—thousands appear daily, many about what might seem trivial: coping with exams, the drama of a broken heart, or their favourite recipes. At first glance, this may feel like noise. Why broadcast such ordinary things? Why read them?
And yet, perhaps hidden in this very ordinariness lies something essential.
The details of an ordinary life are the raw material of meaning. A chipped mug described in a post is never just a mug—it is the writer’s companion through years of mornings. A diary-like entry about waiting for the bus and striking up a conversation with a stranger isn’t really about the bus at all; it’s about longing, patience, connection—or the way we spend so much of life in between places. By capturing such moments, the writer makes the process purposeful.
A blog at its best becomes a gift. It shifts from this is about me to this is for us—and in doing so, it lessens the ego. In writing, the blogger is saying: here is what I saw, what I felt, what I carried, and perhaps you have seen and felt it too. In that recognition, we share something of what it means to be human.
Think of the ancient blogger of the Psalms, David, as he pours out his heart about sleepless nights, fear, joy, and gratitude. He is not afraid of the everyday. His words remain powerful because they name experiences all worshippers of God know. The smallest detail, spoken honestly, can open the largest truths. He wrote in Psalm 51:10, after his fall into adultery:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
In his repentance, he longed for God to perform a kind of system restore, in a metaphorical sense—to forgive him, and for David, broken and conscience-stricken, to start again with a renewed spirit and a clean heart. It is not just about David—it is about us. That is why the Psalms endure: they remind us that we, too, go through the same emotions.
So maybe the task is not to escape the incidents of life, but to tend them and stoke them until they tell us something about being human. To write with care about what is in front of us, trusting that meaning is not imported from elsewhere but uncovered in the ordinary.
A blog, then, is not simply a catalogue of days—it is an offering. Sometimes the offering is insight, sometimes consolation, sometimes just a smile. But always it is a hand extended, saying: you are not alone in this strange, ordinary life