This past week was supposed to go a certain way, and that way it certainly did not go…
- I was supposed to fly to Denver on Wednesday to train a group of church planters, but that didn’t happen
- On Thursday, Christina and I were supposed to interview our first guest together for our podcast, but that didn’t happen either
- And this week, I was supposed to get back to the gym after finally fighting off the stomach bug, but as you might’ve guessed already, that didn’t happen either
That last point, I didn’t mind too much though.
I guess you could say that I was interrupted…
Tuesday morning, while I was getting ready for work, I gave my son, Makarios, a great big hug and squeezed his head close to me, while encouraging him and calling him a big boy. He then immediately pushed himself away from me, while beginning to cry and shout out, “I am not a big boy! I am not a big boy!”
Whoa, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed…
Later on, while I was at work, Christina noticed a big bump behind his left ear, so she asked whether or not he had fallen or hit his head somewhere.
Not that I knew of…
So she brought him to the doctor when the girls came back from school. While there, the doctor basically told her that she had to bring him to the hospital because he needed a CT scan.
Yep. That was our week.
UPDATE: It ended up being an infected lymph-node, rather than what the doctor initially thought, so he’s now at home on heavy antibiotics after a two-night stay at the hospital.)
When’s the last time you were interrupted?
Perhaps it was at the grocery store when you ran into an old friend, or your arch nemesis and you had to turn on your southern charm.
Or maybe, it was a car issue and you were stranded on the side of the road.
Or perhaps, it was an unexpected hospital visit.
How did you feel about the interruption? How did you react? How did you get through it?
Were you annoyed that you were going to have to change your plans?
Did you blame yourself? Were you angry or frustrated that you didn’t do enough to possibly prevent it somehow?
Or, did you blame someone else?
Interruptions are the stuff of life, aren’t they?
Here’s the thing though, the only reason interruptions feel like interruptions is because we already have a set way of doing something.
And it’s when things change on us, that this is when it feels like an interruption.
Just imagine how all of Israel must’ve felt when Jesus began his public ministry?
When Jesus met his disciples, and asked them to follow him, their lives were forever interrupted.
When Jesus turned the water into wine at a wedding, he not only prevented the party from being interrupted due to the wine running out, but he forever interrupted the lives of the servants who saw what happened firsthand.
When Jesus met the Samaritan woman, not only was her life interrupted, but also her village, and the relationship between the Jews and Samaritans.
When Jesus healed the sick, the lame, the blind, and the deaf, their lives and those around them were forever interrupted.
Jesus’ interruption in their life caused them to have to literally learn how to live differently.
The formerly blind, could now see, the formerly deaf, could now hear, and the formerly lame, could now walk. They literally had to change the way they lived because of Jesus’ interruption in their lives.
You’d think that when a man who was born blind experienced sight, everyone would rejoice, right? Apparently this was not the case for the religious leaders of Jesus’ day (read John 9:13-41 to see what I’m talking about).
The religious leaders were so obsessed with not having their ways interrupted, that they found themselves on the other side of the God who they claimed to know and worship.
When you think about it, Jesus literally interrupted the entire religious system, priesthood, and way of life for the Israelites and for all of humanity.
Just think about the time when Jesus went to the temple and saw that it had become a religious place to exchange goods and services. What did he do? He threw everyone and everything out, interrupting the religious system of the day.
And the religious leaders hated him for it.
They hated him for it because he was disrupting the status quo. He was replacing “what was” with “something better.” He was replacing religious rituals that might earn you acceptance before God, for a relationship with God that said, “you are accepted, now live freely and abundantly.”
He was basically saying, “religious leaders, we don’t need you anymore if all you’re doing is necessitating your own existence by pointing people to you…what you need to be doing is pointing people to God instead!”
Friends, there are two sides to interruptions.
We view them one way, but God views them another.
We view them as unplanned, but God views them as planned.
God interrupted society and humanity by sending his son Jesus to die on the cross and be raised from the dead, so that he could interrupt your life and lead you in a new direction today.
And the good news is that what the priests once had to do for us, we can now approach God ourselves for.
Instead of relying on another person to hopefully reconcile us to God with a scapegoat, Jesus has reconciled us completely through his death and resurrection, as long as we confess our sins and draw near to him.
Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
– James 4:7-8 CSB
So stop fighting the interruptions in your life.
While they might seem unplanned, perhaps God is trying to get your attention…