On Monday I made the gravely ill-advised decision to play football.

It was the now-annual resurrection of a game we started playing every Saturday fifteen years ago, a group of dads with our kids and their friends, then aged five. Over the years, the game embraced a changing cast of boys, girls and parents, some regular, some occasional.

The kids grew, the rule preventing adults from scoring unless with their head whilst kneeling was withdrawn, and the game became competitive, faster, more skilful.

Except for me.  I remained steadfastly and stubbornly unskilled, my only on-pitch asset a neat turn of speed which, on Monday, proved my downfall. Trying to keep up with the swift and wily Ollie Cumming (now 21) I first pulled a hamstring and then twisted my knee.  After which, of course, I played on, only to find myself stiff and sore to the point of immobility in the aftermath.

All of which means I’ve spent the last few days hobbling around the house, cursing the stairs and worrying how I’ll get to the loo in the middle of the night.

I wonder, though, whether that might not have been a bad thing.  Sitting still, undistracted at my desk, has drawn me out of the holidays and back towards something more ordinary.

It’s necessary.

At Christmas everything is extraordinary.  We see people we seldom see; we experience generosity we seldom encounter; we play games we never want to play again. We forget what day it is.

But this is the time, twelve days on from Christmas, when Christians remember the story of the wise men, who saw something extraordinary – a new star; and expected something extraordinary – a new king; and then discovered something surpassingly ordinary – a little family with a newborn, struggling to get by.

Which is precisely the point, because Christians believe that’s where God is: in the ordinary, with us.

And that’s lucky, because once we’ve taken the tree down, the ordinary is what’s left.

But the ordinary is where everything happens.

It’s where we live and work and love.

It’s where people who spent the past fifteen years growing, ageing, learning, changing from children to adults in the passing of the ordinary days can still be exactly the same, still playing together, still friends.

And I reckon that is extraordinary.

Listen to this Pause on BBC Sounds

At the top is the ill-advised football match. To the far left is the Boy Silas.