Today, I may face a hundred interruptions and multiple inconveniences. What I do with these moments may be the most important aspect of my day. What if I let these moments be holy moments?
I know what you are saying. An inconvenience could be straight from Satan and something that I could denounce and not think twice about. Or, most likely, an inconvenience could simply be a reflection of my selfish and inconsiderate heart that is ready to be irritated at the slightest drain on my time, energy, or space.
I am always struck by how Jesus dealt with inconveniences. While he is going to heal an important person’s daughter he stops the healing parade to address some forgotten woman, much to the irritation of his disciples. When little kids are around and the disciples are wanting to get rid of them, Jesus rebukes them and says, if anything, these kids should be the model for the rest of them. When a storm is surging around him, Jesus finally is able to take a nap. When soldiers come to arrest Jesus and a servant loses an ear in the scuffle, Jesus takes a moment to heal the wound of the earless man. When his own family comes desperately knocking on the building door for his attention, Jesus doesn’t lose the moment to make a point and welcome all of the faithful to his family.
So, what if I was to take the Jesus approach to these inconveniences and interruptions? Instead of growing irritated and bemoaning the derailment of my day or hour, what if I embraced these moments as a chance to trust, a chance to serve someone, a chance to heal. Instead of dreading that next interruption, what if I welcomed it and looked forward to it because God may be in it and who am I to judge God’s timing, God’s way, and God’s will.
C.S. Lewis calls these interruptions our “real life”:
“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 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.”
I am going to embrace my real inconvenient life today and see what God does with it and how he helps me Grow Up in the process.
Grow Up Blog 