Ordinary is Surrender

" . . . from its first moments, change has been the call to those claiming to be believers.  Sometimes it's called repentance, sometimes conversion, sometimes forgiveness, sometimes surrender.  It goes by lots of names but God's ordinary always means change."

In order to understand how surrender is a way to change you have recognize the point of change itself.  Like surrender: repentance, conversion and forgiveness aren't the things we do just to bide our time or that we do once and are done. The point or hope of change is to fully realize union with God.  They are how "we live and move and have our being" thus are constant practices in a life of faith.

Like playing the piano or basketball surrender as an act of faith must be practiced and learned. That's why monastics make a vow of poverty so central to deepening their daily devotion.   Poverty and letting go of wealth and it's "security" is a real head start into understanding prayer as a surrender and not a performance that somehow pleases God. They were already experts in down-sizing and self-emptying (kenosis) and this outer “poverty” then "instructs" a spiritual poverty that is first of all for the sake of prayer, never an end in itself.

That's why we use language like "getting out of our own way" to recognize our part in living sacramentally with God.  We use the same elements of bread and wine every time we make eucharist to avoid the traps of pride and idolatry that come when we take control to improve or innovate.  We're not monastics but our practice can help us to become more like the symbols we use to remind us that God in Christ is really present with us.

Progressively we come to understand that surrender is a way not a moment.  By "giving up" ourselves in a willingness to be used we are changed from the glory that is God's creation in us into the gospel promised resurrected glories we are meant to become.

This glory that is by surrender is not by our own accomplishment.  By "letting go and letting God." By dying daily to sin we get to live a life of change that never has to stop.  God's ordinary is change.