Ordinary to Extraordinary 

By Dave Hughes (Head of Learning & Innovation)

At times during isolation I’ve felt pretty ordinary. 

There have been times that I’ve felt like a pretty ordinary Zoom teacher and a pretty ordinary parent. 

I’ve felt pretty ordinary about the amount of exercise I’ve managed to do and the amount of chocolate I’ve eaten. 

And if my performances in the International Dance Day and A Whole New World videos are anything to go by, ordinary is a very apt description of my creative skills! 

Yet if there’s one thing that gives me a little hope, it’s the idea repeated throughout the Scriptures that ordinary people can live in extraordinary ways. 

Think about Abraham venturing out into the unknown to the Promised Land, or Joseph being sold by his own brothers into slavery only to rise to the top of Egypt and save his family. Think about Peter walking on the water and becoming the rock of the Church or Saul going from killing Christians to becoming Paul the apostle of the early church. 

The Bible is full of flawed figures who live in extraordinary ways. 

Yet, how exactly do they do it?

I want to suggest that these ordinary heroes all found a way to H-A-C-K (Habits - Aims - Community - Kindness) their lives. 

To live in extraordinary ways each of these heroes cultivated humble habits, they aimed for the stars, they cultivated compassionate and creative community, and they sought to embody the faith, hope, love and kindness of Jesus. 

They allowed the love of Christ to inspire their habits, to frame their aims, and shape their community in such a way that aligned them with what God wanted to do in the world. So that when they were faced with an unknown and uncertain future they were empowered to make choices that were extraordinary.

And each of their adventures started with a simple choice in the face of a crisis. 

Lawrence Summers, a Harvard professor, writing in the Financial Times suggests that the COVID-19 crisis is a ‘hinge of history’. Much like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that led to World War 1, or the 1929 Stock Market Crash that triggered the Great Depression, or the Munich Conference of 1938 that led to World War 2, the COVID-19 crisis will disrupt and reshape the world in long-lasting ways that we cannot even imagine.

And just like the ordinary heroes in the Bible, faced with disruption and crisis, doubt and the unknown, we too have a choice: Do we retreat in fear to live an ordinary existence or do we step out in faith to live in extraordinary ways?

As our students begin to transition back to school, my hope and prayer is that they might find the courage that they need to step out in faith into this unknown future so that they too might live in extraordinary ways.