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| Mike Hosey, An Elder |
We usually
think of interruptions in life as evil. They’re troublesome. They bother
us. They keep us from being productive.
They slow everything down, and get in the way of our scheduled goals for the
day. They’re almost always
frustrating. If you’ve ever had kids,
you know about interruptions in all of their multi-faceted and very deep glory.
In fact, there have been a few times where my children gave me major
interruptions. Now that I’m older and
wiser, I wish I had seen those interruptions for what they were – opportunities
to bring love, kindness, patience and Jesus into their lives.
Interruptions
are part of daily life. Just the other day in my office I had several administrative
goals I had to reach before going home.
But every time I tried to start working on one of those goals, someone
came through my door and asked for help, or guidance, or just for someone to
listen to their plight. It didn’t let up
for most of the morning. In fact, those interruptions forced me to re-arrange
the whole afternoon. But the truth is
that those people needed assistance. I am, after all, there to serve those
people. I am there precisely to serve my clients, and precisely to serve those who work under me. These were not interruptions, really.
These were opportunities for me to fulfill my duty to God and his
calling on my life, both with active effort, and by demonstrating a personal
example of patience -- a patience that they will surely know comes from the Holy Spirit as they get to know me more.
Jesus tells the story in Luke 10:30-36, of a man who was
traveling, and was mugged by thieves and left in a state of near death. Two men from Jewish upper society passed him
by, perhaps viewing him as an interruption. But a third man, a despised and
lowly Samaritan, helped restore him. He
didn’t see an interruption, but instead an opportunity to do good, and display
the love God intends for all of us to exhibit. C.S. Lewis put it this way in a
letter he once wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves: “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant
things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course
that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life
God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of
one’s own imagination.”
Lewis recognized that real life, with all its interruptions
was, perhaps, the best way to recognize God and His divine opportunities.
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